Review your garden.

As I trundle around the garden every morning search for slugs and snails I tend to do a mini review of what is doing well, what needs tweaking, dead-headed, weeded, staked etc. Now and again though I do a bigger review of certain areas that just don’t work for me. Some plants may have outgrown their space. Some I just don’t like how they have grown ie their shape or colour or their relationship with the plants next to them. I am trying to be ruthless so am having to make the decision whether or not to keep the aster I planted (rather too close to the path), or move it further back, or do away with it altogether. It isn’t a plant that I love but it is a good do-er. I think I will wait until it has gone over and then find a replacement – one that I do love. The area near the patio where the soil can get quite wet and is rather clay-like is still annoying me. A thorn-less rose like Zephirine Drouhin might do well there, but then maybe a couple of dogwoods would thrive in those conditions? Is there room for both dogwoods and a rose? Another area of uncertainty is the central bed where the large tree heath is growing just a bit too large. You can see from the photo that it wasn’t pruned right after flowering this year (you can see the old white blooms have gone brown) and I would like to cut it down in size to allow the other plants a bit more room. How far down should I prune it? I don’t want to take it right down to the base so maybe just take a 1/3 off? That would mean I wouldn’t get any flowers next year but I can live with that. We are still waiting for the house next door to be sold (been a few years now) and both the front and back gardens will be in a right state. The garden wall is needing fixed as the previous owner removed the buttress on their side and has started to fall over at the back. I haven’t been able to sort that area out and plant up as we don’t want any builders walking all over it. Major pain in the backside! Hey ho.

There are still a few plants which are flowering sporadically and some that come into bloom fully at this time of year so the insects can still enjoy a feed. The Japanese anemones, cyclamen and persicarias are looking great just now. A couple of heathers are about to bloom. A few of the hellebores are in flower, so too are the nepeta, mint, oregano, aster, coreopsis, viburnum, weigela, geum, knapweed, prunella, deadnettle, roses, parahebe, and even a few flowers still on the geraniums and foxgloves. The apples are looking good. They are not really keepers so I always have a bit of a glut at this time of year so I make apple sauce, apple pies and crumbles, stewed apples to freeze, eat some and give some away to pals. Today however I will just be weeding and browsing my bulb catalogues.