Exactly that.
A couple of years ago we took on this 1930s built renovation project and after MUCH back breaking work managed to unearth original borders in the front garden and re-instate the front lawn as the whole area had devolved into a waste high mess of overgrowth (Amongst a whole bunch of internal preservation work)
All is great in the sense that the borders have Ben uncovered and have some FANTASTIC heritage planting in them, starting with waves of snowdrops, followed by daffodils, then bluebells…. The issue is, it gets to this time of year and the whole lot is mixed with weeds. The finished daffodils look scruffy, and I'm worried that too much weeding/digging will kill off/dig out the heritage planting and pull out the bulbs that are there ruining it for future years.
How best to deal with/tidy up these borders?
Thanks in advance comrades.
by Legitimate-Ad-6491
7 Comments
Looks great to me.
It looks like my garden this time of year. The only things I can see that don’t want to be disturbed are the Solomon’s seal and the Welsh poppies. Pretty much nothing you do will kill off your bluebells and daffs. If I disturb daff bulbs when weeding I just pop them back in when finished and they don’t seem to mind. You’ve got what looks like a rhododendron seedling in picture 3 – unless it’s a nice variety I’d have that out before it takes over the border. Then get some tough summer flowering perennials like hardy geraniums : Rozanne and Patricia types for sunny areas and geranium phaeum and nodosum for shady places. Plant the geraniums practically on top of the daffs and then the emerging geranium leaves camouflage the dying daff leaves a bit.
you are going to get some hate for the spanish bluebells, google it?
I would get some golf ts to mark any bulbs you want to keep. amazon has these including Biodegradable and wooden ones for a few £s. you could get two colours, one for snowdrops one for dafs etc.
Then go to town removing the bluebells if you can. If you dont want to do deadhead them deadheading will prevent them from setting seed which causes the issue to spread.
Or at the very least dont worry about damaging the bluebells, they will come back unless you put some real effort in.
you probably need to be a bit careful about what you remove incase it is things you do want but didn’t recognise.
Personally I would sketch out the space, writting in the different plant names.
Different shrubs have different pruning needs, some in the summer some winter. you have what looks some hornbeam in the hedge which needs pruning to keep it manageable..
You can then trim back any as appropriate this season while weeding out plants you dont want. as you remove things you are going to have open space where more weeds will creep in. Plants like hardy geraniums are also great in places like this as they provide ground cover for weeds while being easy to maintain. also they are quite old fashioned looking which is good here.
In that front bed, you have some lovely solomon’s seal rose etc,
once you know what you have you can also look into fertilising needs as well.
Basiscally focus on working out what you have, so you can then decide what you dont want.
That is a lovely garden.
Looks lovely to me!
I probably wouldn’t do a lot with the planting other than any general weeding/dead heading/shaping.
What I would do though is take a spade and slice a defined border edge between your grass and the soil. The messiest bit for me is the leaves and bits of tall grass that you can’t easily strim without destroying your plants. It’ll instantly make it look a lot tidier.
I’d start fresh personally. It looks like a nice space, and most of the bulbs can be saved and stored until planting time. Nothing in there looks too important to keep or if it is simply dig around it. I could be wrong tho but being brutal will save a lot of time and effort imo. Good luck
All looks good to me, but understand some like nicely manicured landscape gardens. I prefer the more natural, wild, cottage garden approach. That’s the beauty of gardens, each to there own, make a space you enjoy