The Easter Weekend gave us chance to renew an area in our cottage garden which had become overgrown by a rampant evergreen honeysuckle climbing up a wooden arbour and from there into a laburnum. Indeed, it threatened the laburnum itself as well as all the other plants on an arbour, and all those trying to survive beneath the laburnum. An unusual arrow leaved ivy seemed to be the main survivor as ground cover along with some sweet cicely, aconites and sweet woodruff.
We cut down all twenty five feet of the rampaging evergreen honeysuckle and took it out by its roots. Then we reduced two other honeysuckles growing on the arbour to just a metre hoping they would regrow and, in time, once more provide a fragrant entrance to the cottage garden.We also thinned part of the laburnum and removed most of the ivy. The ground below was very very dry so we added two big loads of juicy, wormy, home made compost and now its ready for planting.
Various hellebores, aquilega, foxgloves, lily of the valley, geraniums and ferns will all be happy here, so I plan to split many of these plants from other areas of the garden or retrieve seedlings. Its always fun having a new area to plant up and over the next two weeks I should have filled the gaps although I might leave one or two just in case there are any special delights to buy at Malvern Show!
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2 comments:
This appears to be writen by someone in Britain. I live in Southern California near the beach, but my backyard faces north so I have much shade. My question would be, will these plants work in my area? And what are the plants listed on the right-hand side? Are these ones that would also work?
Thank you.
Yes, my garden is in Bedfordshire, UK where we temperatures ranging from 10 degrees of frost to around 80degrees F most of the time. Rainfall is around 25 inches although this particular area of the garden is fairly dry. I mentioned hellebores, aquilega, foxgloves, lily of the valley, geraniums and ferns...why not give them a try or check whether they appear in any of your neighbours gardens.
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