The terrace bank in spring

1terrace bank 1There’s no point just dazzling you with flowering lavenders and stunning irises. This is a record of all the garden areas on this farm.  And I need to point out the successful along with the ones we call A Work In Progress.

Or as my garden designer friend Andrew would say were he standing on this terraced bank behind the potting shed ‘We could do a really good edit of this area.’

Isn’t he a gentleman? What he really means is it’s a dog’s breakfast of a planting scheme and time to sort it out.

Some parts of the garden get garden maintenance, and little else. And this seems to be the case with this area. If you look on the Farm Tour section you will see the terrace bank evolving from a scrappy hen run with no soil and plenty of granite, to what you see today.

I am proud that I have the structure right. But I’ve a long way to go to achieving some of the wow that you find in the shade garden just a bit further along the garden.1terrace bank detail

You cannot see them but I have planted santolina shrubs on most of the middle terraces here.  They are titchy and will take about two years to look impressive.

But there is a bit too much of everything else here. I could pretend that is intentional and call it a nursery bed, or a quarantine area for plants I have been given and am trialling.

But actually I’m still struggling with the design. I like how the barn garden looks with santolinas and lavenders anchoring the planting look.  So I shall try something similar here.

I’m happy with the mixed hedge I planted along the boundary of the bank.  The photinia is a bit ghastly and red; but that changes into lush green growth eventually. And the hornbeams are stalwarts.

1euphorbiasBut cohesion is missing.  The first thing I want to do this autumn is a mass planting of bulbs.  That way I will have flowers for cutting, but also some colour here.

Golly it’s a dull place right now.  I don’t even have the acid green and yellow of the euphorbias that are in the shade garden.

And I definitely want to add some more alliums for the late spring moment when you are just reach for some powerful tall baubles to look at when you put away the weeding basket.

Basket?  Wheelbarrow more like.  This is the debris from just the first pass of the shade garden bank.  And that is a bed that is heavily mulched.

But back to the terrace bank. I have two things that I managed to miss moving.  Again.  Every year I make a note to lift and move the peony in the front garden bed which isn’t happy.  1wheelbarrow of weeds

And also to lift the huge miscanthus grass mid way up the bank.  It is a leftover from a design I tried with calamagrostis Karl Foerster grasses and miscanthus.

The calamagrostis came out and were given away, but I missed the two days in spring when the miscanthus had come into growth but hadn’t taken off in a spectacular fashion.

So it will dutifully go back onto the list for next year. Along with an even longer list on my 2015 bulb order.

Back to the weeding.