What’s Wrong With my Garden?

August is never the best month in my garden, but this year my garden is looking particularly disappointing. There’s not much colour. Everything looks well past its best or worse still worn out. The patio is a bit of a mess. And I’m still undecided about how my poor, damaged Catalpa tree will work out.

It’s all a bit overwhelmingly disappointing. But it’s not going to help if I sit and mope. So I’ve taken a look around my garden, identified what’s actually looking good, bad and downright ugly – and come up with a plan of attack.

The Patio

First up is my patio. Now as with all these things, it’s not all doom and gloom. My Hosta Sum and Substance is looking the best he’s ever looked. The ferns above are fine as are the heucheras.

And while lots of people lost their Pittosporums in the frosts, mine in her pot is looking superb.

Continuing with the good for a moment, next to the Pittosporum, the Dahlia Mexican Star in pots above looks lovely. Also some of my clematis – particularly the cheap ones I bought from Morrisons for a few pounds – have looked great and still do.

However, there are some disasters.

Hostas

Some of my hostas in containers have been severely attacked by slugs. They look shockingly bad. I think the problem was that I had the hostas to start with sheltered along the pathway near my back door, under a lot of overhanging plants. This made them far to easy for resourceful slugs to access and for me to forget!

I also didn’t keep a vigilant enough eye on them and didn’t put any slug prevention measures in place. So next year I’m going to be much much more careful with them.

Sweet Peas

I have a love hate relationship with sweet peas. I love their scent. And having little posies of sweet peas in the house is lovely. But…they’re a faff.

They need support; I have two wigwams of them on the patio. I have to cut back the tendrils and keep tying them in. You must also constantly and feed them to keep the blooms coming. I also need to keep retying the wigwams as the birds try to unpick and steal the string. And even after doing all this, come August the sweet peas look washed out. The flowers are still being produced but their leaves look terrible.

And if I’m really honest, only two posies have made it into the house, the rest have remained in vases on our garden table where they more often than not have been rained on and become very bedraggled. I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.

So, shock horror, I don’t think I’m going to bother with them next year! This isn’t a cop out, it’s a decision made after weighing up the pros and cons, and I’m comfortable with that.

Basket with Salvia

I have an old toy basket which we used to house the kids’ dressing up clothes. My kids loved dressing up and acting out little made-up plays. Once my four sadly got too old for all that, and those nylon wigs, halloween masks, cowboy hats, spiderman suits etc were forgotten, I decided to repurpose the basket. It made a brilliant planter and I rammed it full of different plants.

During the first few years it contained a gorgeous combination of gaura and plus some foxgloves (above) But the gaura one year suddenly died on me – as they can. So I planted it up with some Salvia Royal Bumble plants I’d grown from cuttings.

The basket continued to look lovely and an absolute bee magnet. But this year I have to admit it’s all looking past its best. The salvia has become very straggly.

And the basket is falling to bits!

So, I think I’m going to repot this plant in a new container and ditch the basket. I’ll probably do it in the spring. At the same time I’m going to trim the saliva back by a third. In the meantime, I’ll give the salvia a good mulch in the old basket over winter, to protect the plant from the worst of the frosts.

Hopefully this TLC will refresh the salvia but if it doesn’t, well I’ve new cuttings taken from the plant coming along nicely. I’ll simply use them instead. As it’s worth remembering that perennials do eventually tire and need to be ditched.

Sunny Bed

My sunny bed has been very hit and miss too this year.

A Rose Problem

Of the four roses in the border, two have struggled to produce their second flush of blooms and another is looking a bit lack-lustre.

I think this is a problem lots of people are experiencing with their roses. I’m not sure whether the funny weather we had affected them. Whatever the cause, I’m not going to worry too much but I am going to keep up my feeding regime for the roses – using Uncle Tom’s rose feed as recommended by my lovely neighbour Desi. I definitely think it’s helping the rose Natasha Richardson in the bed (below) which is looking particularly good this year. Whereas normally she’s the one most likely to struggle.

However this problem has highlighted how very dependent the bed is for colour or even just flowers from the roses – especially in August. This is especially true on its sunniest side – the side closest to the patio. So I’m going to take drastic action and completely replant the front edge – about 2 metres of the bed.

Nepeta & Phlox

I also need to be much firmer with two areas which are becoming tired. The nepeta (above) on the corner of the bed needs dividing to freshen it up.

Similarly, I’ve a huge clump of Phlox Mount Fuji. It’s tall and late flowering, indeed it’s only just coming into bloom now. The scent is heavenly and I do love it. But there aren’t that many blooms. I wonder if the clump is not peforming well enough because it has become a bit too congested. So I’m going to divide it too.

Confession time. I tried to divide this Phlox last autumn. And I made a start but then bottled it. I was worried I was damaging the plants too much. Well this year I won’t be such a wimp. I’ll divide both the Phlox and Nepeta in the autumn. Here’s my blog on dividing perennials.

Sedum

The far side of my sunny border looks much much better. It has good colour but there’s a clump of Sedum which again needs dividing. I did one clump last autumn and the resultant plants look fab.

But for some reason I didn’t do the other clump. I think I wasn’t sure I had the space to put the plants. Or maybe I got distracted (more likely the case as I can get spectacularly sidetracked when gardening!) Whatever my reason, I’m going to remedy the situation this autumn and divided up this remaining clump.

Achillea

Ok I have a wider problem around the garden with my Achillea Moonshine. The plant is normally a gorgeous acidy yellow. You can see it in the picture above from a couple of years ago. But this clump I have in a pot hasn’t done its stuff this time around. It’s not surprising. The pot is far too congested. So this autumn I’m going to tip the pot out, divide up the plant into several plants and repot it up in lovely fresh compost.

Now that all sounds great but that’s not my only Achillea problem.

I also have it in my semi shaded bed above. The bed looks lovely in May and June but by August it’s a disaster. The Alliums have gone and what’s left is mostly Achilleas. But the problem is that the sun strikes this bed from our other lovely neighbour – David’s garden. Consequently every flower in this bed turns its head away from us and towards David!

The Achilleas are a particular problem as they have a tendency to be straggly too. As the summer progresses so they bend and stretch to seek out the sun. They end up creating a dreadful mess. And I don’t even benefit from their blooms!

Achillea Action

So I’m taking drastic action. I’m going to lift all of them from the bed and have a rethink. This will leave me with spaces in this bed to fill with something that blooms in August, doesn’t need much sun and is ideally hot pink or acid yellow. If you’ve any suggestions do share!

It will also leave me with oodles of Achilleas. I’m not sure what I’ll do with them. I may buy a job lot of cheap bright blue pots, pack them with the Achilleas and put them in full sun. I think the contrast of the yellow and blue would look fab.

Mmmm. I’ll certainly put some in a huge blue container we have at the front of the house. It’s got an Erysimum Bowles Mauve.

This originally looked lovely combined with some other bits and bobs including a geranium as you can see above. But it was clobbered by the frosts and the lovely Erysimum is almost dead.

I’m going to try to take some semi-hardwood cuttings from it now. I’m not sure if they’ll work as the plant looks very unhappy. Then in the autumn I’ll remove the old plant and put some of the Achilleas in the blue pot.

But what I’ll do with the rest, I’m not sure.

Spare Plants

I may well keep the Achilleas in temporary pots, as next year I’ll be redoing the bottom of our garden. Yes, Mr F-W predicts the two sheds at the bottom of the garden could be down by the end of March. In which case I’ll have a whole new area to design and fill with plants. The Achilleas, spare Sedums, Nepetas and Phlox from all that autumn division, together with the plants removed from my sunny bed, will all need a home. Maybe that home will be at the bottom of the garden! We’ll have to wait and see.

The thought of reimagining that part of the garden has put a smile straight back on my face.

Happy gardening X