We dug over and planted into the bed which sits next to the new drive. As the space will be used to park the car, we choose to plant a grass that will fill out and create a nice green edge to the space, but won’t mind being stepped on from time to time. We used Hakonechloa ‘macra‘. This type of Japanese forest grass is one of my favourite grasses as its diminutive size means that it has a lovely mounding habit that doesn’t flop over or look messy. It also moves in unison when the wind blows in such a lovely way.
We also planted a new tree this month – a Liquidambar styraciflua ‘Worplesdon‘. This tree has been grafted onto a rootstock which means it won’t grow as tall as it normally would. We’ve planted it at the front of the house to create a feature but also to frame the drive.
We’ve added to the planting in the front garden area. We’ve included ground covering plants like ajuga and geranium in order to soften the lines of where this bed starts an ends. We’ve also added in some wooden stepping stones so that we can access all parts of the bed. It’s exciting to see how much this area has developed since we first planted into it at the beginning of August compared to late September.
Here’s an update of the long thin border that sits to the left of the walled area. As you can see, this part of the garden has transformed this year.
It is encouraging to see how the planting beds around the wall have developed since we plated them in September 2019. Here is a photo taken at the initial planting stage compared to this month.
The ornamental grasses in the main mixed border have looked wonderful this month – this cultivar below is ‘Silberfeder‘
We planted into both long side borders this month with 40 x Anenome ‘Konigin Charlotte‘, 6 x Eupatorium ‘Atropurpureum‘ and 40 x Helenium ‘Moerheim Beuty‘. We’ve broken a horticultural rule by planting near to a tree (which we planted in 2018). This means that the tree will not grow as optimally as it should… and we will also have to watch out for the area not getting too dry. However, when weighing up our options, we decided we would go for it in order to have fuller planting. I will take some photos of all of this planting next month although you can see a snapshot in the bottom photo. Hopefully by then these late flowering plants may be in bloom.
