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Saturday, September 4, 2010

Garden Photo – September

More work in progress. The hosepipe is on the lawn, not because we’d been watering, but because OH has a new toy and it was standing in the place where the hosepipe is normally situated.

The new toy? A chipper/mulcher. The reason? We have an apple tree that had just become too unsafe to remain in the garden, and so we ended up with quite a lot of logs – no good for burning because the tree is rotten and far too many for the beetlearium that we’ve built out of logs and branches as a wildlife habitat.

So the top of the border on the left of the photo has been mulched with apple chippings. And once we got started, OH finally got the idea of the border I’ve been trying to get him to agree to for years. So since I took this photo out came the rather boring laurel that’s been doing nothing but create a rainshadow for about a decade. Out came the flowering currant that had totally taken over about a sixth of the border. Into the chipper both went and out came the mulch.

Now I have the fun of replanting. My Katsura tree has stayed where it is, near the house so that I can catch its wonderful burnt sugar scent all autumn, and the orange-berried pyracathus remains against the fence. Between the two though, apart from a low growing conifer that’s been in the border since before we moved in, is a big fat nothing! In place of the laurel I plan to put a Romneya coulteri for summer colour, and under it some nerines for late autumn\early winter colour, with a drift of purple and white crocus filling the remaining space and offering some spring brightness. But what else I shall plant I currently have no idea – it’s very exciting!

The bald patch on the lawn has almost disappeared, but I bet you it's back again next spring! And the bottom right hand corner of the garden looks a bit 'heavy' in autumn, partly owing to a vast clump of bamboo that we use to make canes and winter structures (you can make a lovely vase-shaped cloche with green bamboo than then becomes nice and solid and can be filled with straw to protect tender plants from the frost and snow. Still, it needs a bit of thinking about, while OH is merrily ripping plants out, which he usually refuses to do!

Labels: autumn garden, monthly garden photograph