Monday, August 13, 2012

Garden tour part I

The year - and the blog posting - is getting away from me. When I moved into my house it came with a deck, chunk of lawn, slightly past it rectangular swimming pool and border of boring traditional shrubs. The pool was obviously going to become a formal lilypond but the shrubs and lawn had to go. I took out the lawn last year and put in a mix of perennial wildflowers of the type you'd see in the "new dutch perennial style" - I like everything about these, they're easy to grow, colourful and longlasting and they are such great pollinator attractors that the garden literally comes alive - and also one or two more exotic things (Agave american medio-picta, a trachycarpus palm, Musa sikkimensis, some kniphofias) with two aims. Firstly I wanted to create a lowish bed I could half see the pond through and secondly I wanted to create a kind of tropical prairie look of the kind I'd seen in South Africa, Aus and bits of south america where spikeys and fleshy tropicals mix with simple flowers and grasses. Its gone OK......


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The Verbena bonariensis never really stopped growing. It will need chopping back hard this year and maybe the amount of it in action will need reassessing. There are a few weeds but you'll have to pretend you can't see them. This was June....

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Salvia hotlips dominates a bed at the end of the shrub border....
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One of my other Salvias is selfseeding. I love free plants.
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Echinacea paradoxa

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I've always liked the squat Agave parryi so couldn't resist this one at a local garden centre even if it is dwarfed by the nearby Echinacea...
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1 comment:

Brando said...

I haven't had the privilege yet of visiting South Africa, Aus, or much of South America...but your garden is very much alive with vibrant colors. I love the purple flowering bush near the water feature. Gravel is a nice approach...here in the states, everyone uses mulch, pine straw or turf grass...and most often, the gravel used (at least what I've seen) is rather unkempt. You've done a beautiful job. Happy growing!