Prior to this, this border had a David Austin rose, ‘Fighting Temeraire,’ with lavender, oregano, a small pittosporum, along with vinca major ‘varigata,’ otherwise known as the Greater Periwinkle.
Over the years, the lavender had grown out over the lawn, killing off the grass. We discussed ideas, and decided to remove everthing and completely change the border.
A lot of render that had been removed from the face of the house during the work they had done was all over the front garden. So we began by raking the lawn and border, to remove all the chippings of render. We cut back the lavender and dug it up. We salvaged the oregano, but all the other plants were removed.
We uncovered the original edging stones and continued raking out the border of all the white render. Vinca is a good plant in certain situations, though it can be a bit of a thug and will easily take over a border. It had been doing so here, so we spent a good amount of time using a mattock and digging out all of the roots.
Once the area had been fully dug over and raked we started planting. In the left corner, we planted Euphorbia ‘Black Pearl,’ with x1 Lavender ‘Munstead,’ next to it. We then planted Hebe ‘Rose Sparkler,’ and Euryops pecinatus. All are evergreen with seasonal interest. Our customer was keen to have more colour and flowers. We also added a few thyme and anemone blanda in pink and blue.
After it had been planted, we added a composted horse manure mulch. This is fantastic stuff and will give added nutrition to this border as it degrades and is taken down into the soil by worms.
The plants look small at the moment, but they will all grow to fill these spaces. It is important to mulch your borders. It retains the moisture in the soil to be available for plants during warm or hot weather. It also suppresses weeds, and makes it easier to pull weeds out, as they will grow in the mulch rather than deeper down in the soil. Mulch also looks great as a top dressing and smells good too. There are different types of mulch, useful for different scenarios.
Getting the lawn back in check will be the next task. Watch this space to see what else we get up to.
