Instant gardening

Reader, I cheated.

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Behold the ‘suddenly can’t tell it was destroyed’ garden bed. It has had a makeover.

I decided that I couldn’t keep walking past the burnt sticks any longer. So out came the secateurs and I attacked the choiysia which you can see on the left of the picture below.

We just have to wait and see if it resprouts.

The same for the poor little pistachio that is a very brown button of shame in the middle of the picture. I can’t bring myself to uproot it just yet. But I fear it has to go.

Next up along the whole edge half a dozen rosemaries. The workhorses of the dry garden. There are so many shrubs at the far end of that part of the garden that you can’t even tell the gaps where I uprooted five huge plants.

I just waded in with the fork.

I went mainly for the wonderful prostrate ones which might flow over the now rather bare bank. In a decade or so.

I will show the ‘after shot’ in a mo.

And then for a bit of visual delight – lots of sedums in under the rosemaries. Add in one very large ballota (not happy to be wrenched out of its spot in the orchard, but thank goodness for a warm week and an overflowing mountain spring).

Then lots of the lovely dark inky red irises I had potted up late year.

And buckets and buckets of gravel.

So from this:

I had a few days to find any spare soil lying about and empty out dozens of spent compost from the pots in the shed. The whole bank had to be built up to make it level.

To this:

You almost can’t see the joins.

The one good thing about this disaster is I get a chance to make the whole area more cohesive: just rosemaries, irises, phlomis and ballota.

And gravel. All hail gravel.

But from the bottom looking up the bank it’s a different story.

I just don’t know if all those cypress will survive.

I’m watering like mad and just hoping things will surprise me.

It’s that or go shopping.

The eragrostis grasses are leaping back to life on the bank.

And I did a bit of a sneaky transplant of some large ones just under the new very ugly wall.

The miscanthus at the base of the bank?

Only time will tell.

But it’s not all bad.

Have a look at The Creature’s latest party trick. She is always one to roll in the dirt and generally get very grotty. I should have called her Pig Pen. But of late this is her new rolling spot.

Down the very steep slope in the courtyard. And every time she does it makes me laugh.

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When she gets to the bottom (rather fast) she shakes herself, looks around to check where I am, then races up to the top and repeats.

Mad.

But in a good way.