In last month’s post I talked about how we prepared a large new planting bed. In March we planted 2 trees into this space and they’ve instantly provided height and impact. Since we’ve already planted 3 multi stem silver birch in the garden (Betula utilis var. jacquemontii), we thought it would be effective to plant a single stem cultivar called ‘Doorenbos‘. We also planted an ornamental pear – Pyrus calleryana ‘Chanticleer‘. It has beautiful spring blossom and also develops its foliage very early in the season.
newly planted silver birch and ornamental pear
spring blossom on the pear
This month we also prepared and planted into the space surrounding the secret seating area. We built this area in June 2019, so it’s been great to finally plant into this space. As it’s a small area, we’ve kept the planting scheme quite minimal. We’ve used ferns (Dryopteris affinis) and also the hostas that we used to keep as pot plants at the front of the house. You can see the different hosta cultivars we have in this post from May 2019. We hope that using foliage plants will help us to achieve the calming atmosphere we’re looking for.
the soil in this section of the garden is very heavy clay…
…so we dug in well rotted manure to improve the soil structure ready for planting
we’ve planted ferns (Dryopteris affinis) and hostas into this new bed. We first played around with their positioning to make sure they were appropriately spaced. You can’t make out the hostas yet as they’re still dormant.so that we don’t compact the soil, we positioned some leftover stones from the wall project into the bed. We’ve also ordered some more bark chippings which we’ll use as a mulch.the climbing hydrangea (petiolaris) has started to grow again. It’s developing flower buds for the first time which is very exciting.
This month we continued to plant up the mound. We’ve used 2 cultivars of Miscanthus (Morning Light and Strictus), and also 2 types of Calamagrostis (Overdam and Brachytricha). I divided some leucanthemum and positioned them at the foot of the mound, as well as add Helianthus Lemon Queen for late summer flowers and height.
The bulbs which I planted last autumn are continuing to grow and some of the flower heads are starting to show on the tulips.
