Mass planting Gaura
I’m trying something new. Fast short blog posts. Mini picture essays. Lunchtime notes while I charge my phone (a morning spent listening to podcasts has drained the battery.)
Let’s see if I can keep it up. Here’s my first.
Don’t you just love that feeling when you sow all these beauties – Gaura linheimeri – early in March? And up they come. Fuss-free germination. A gift from Caroline who posted me the seeds.
On they go until they are big enough and strong enough to plant out in the garden.
They have been mooching about in the potting shed since way too long. Time to shove them out into the world.
I woke at the glorious hour of 0538 this morning with the answer to my conundrum.
Where on earth will I be planting out 41 little gauras that will have a stunning effect of a mass planting?
The answer? In the little bed that sits at the entrance to the walnut bank.
It is already pretty full of two Szechuan pepper plants, dozens of alliums just going over, heaps of sedum. Jostling instant-gardening iris. A few left over acanthus mollis plants that weren’t eaten by the hares.
But, hey, there is always room for more.
And if they flower well into autumn they will be backlit by the late autumn sun that dips over this part of the farm.
And now I have done it. 41 healthy little seedlings all nestled in and tucked up under a mulch.
There was a pause for some cat nurturing. No room on the lap for plants when four pawed claws wants a cuddle. But it was a short break. She’s scared of the hose. And I needed to do a lot of irrigating before I planted up.
What a shame you can’t see a thing.
If they survive the hares and deer I should get a good late summer display.
And here is the inspiration. Back in a Gardener’s Illustrated magazine in 2011.
This was a designer (curse not writing down their name) of a very flat garden somewhere a bit moister than here. But I loved how they delineated the garden with rows of iris, ballota and gaura up behind. Ooh and if you peer carefully there are purple sage clumps too.
My kind of plants.
And well done me for keeping this picture in the back of one of my farm diaries all this time.
And for mass planting the ballota up the bank behind the trees in the orchard.
It’s not often one make’s good on the design intentions.
Now I’m off to try and plant out something more from the potting shed. It may be drought-stricken out there, but at least the wind has died down and it’s not stinky hot.