Rearranging the furniture

Here we are, hard at work on the terrace bank above the potting shed. Deftly moving plants.

Artur was acting in a supervisory role, and getting in the way by rolling in the newly cleared earth as I weeded.

I had planted centranthus ruber (valerian) on one of the terrace banks a few years ago and it had bulked out so well that it was time to divide.

And the sedums had to be moved as well. In my nascent role as a garden designer (ie not very good) I had put the sedums with the valerian, and watched them fight it out.

Now each of the five terraces has a share of plants. And hopefully next summer I will have a more even spread of colour and interest.

I also dug up the verbena bonariensis plants that I had planted out in an arc in front of the potting shed in spring.   These were the leftovers from a spring sowing.   And these have been dotted about the terrace as well.

I am pleased. It’s not easy to photograph this vast garden area. So I will try and distract you with a picture of the potager from the potting shed. I noticed this angle when I was digging up the verbena plants.   Fetching.

And this afternoon I decided to go down to this part of the garden and attack the soft fruit orchard. This is the long wide bed in front of the vegetable garden that is so, so productive. It’s more like a jostaberry forest.

And it’s certainly a blackberry forest.

We inherited all this fruit and I have pruned and cut back and generally glared at the thornless blackberries for five years now. Almost six.

I just don’t like them. They are bred to be thornless and at the expense of any decent flavour in the fruit.   Big bruisers, but not really very good. They can only be tasted at their best in a tart or a jam.

But by the time they ripen towards the end of summer, I am so tired of making jam and baking tarts that I must confess to ignoring  them a bit.

As long as I can make one decent fruit tart a year I am pleased.   But they take up so much space!

I didn’t prune them back last year as I thought it would be fun to grow the long tendrils over towards the back of the bed, making a feature of the top of the septic tank.

Well, the huge concrete lid of the septic tank. I have hidden it under weedproof fabric and put on a thin layer of mulch.   This an attempt to make it look planned.

And what did the blackberries do? Instead of growing south, they went east and west. Bulking out the front of the border and not going in the direction I want at all.

I will have a more radical prune tomorrow and see if I can’t train them in the right direction.   But otherwise Their Days Are Numbered.   I’d much rather plant more black currants and red currants here instead.