The Charming Nook

Hello and welcome back to my blog, where I document my gardening journey in my garden full of nooks.

The post today outlines the development of one of my favourite areas in the garden: The Wild Borders.

I named this area The Wild Borders due to its unexpected bloom into life and its wild and beautiful display of blooms in Summer 2023. I didn’t plant any of these flowers and some flowers (like the nigella and red valerian) have just self-seeded.

This is a long post today, that looks back through 2023, so grab a hot drink of your choice and I hope you enjoy reading!

Introduction

The Mr and I moved into our property in December 2022 during a period of fiercely cold weather. It was so cold that our water pipes froze! As you can imagine, in the frenzy of moving and initial cleaning, decorating and unpacking, gardening took a back seat. I spent some days out wandering the garden, trying to figure out what plants were what, but mostly it was a case of wait and see.

January, February and March 2023

January was spent mostly staring at the garden and scratching my head at the mess:

I did however clear the right-hand side border from weeds and discovered a huge collection of what I suspected was Crocosmia hidden in a clump beneath the honeysuckle and at the back of the border. I dug all of this up and replanted them throughout the border:

It wasn’t until later in February that I started to see some signs of other new growth in the main border. Whilst starting to clear the bed from weeds and dead foliage, I discovered Nigella seed heads (which were empty), Aquilegia seedlings and what I later discovered was Red Valerian:

I then essentially left everything alone, just picking out the weed seedlings I could identify as time went on and watched as the plants grew.

May, June and July 2023

The months May to July 2023 were probably some of the best for these borders. The natural abundance of all the plants bursting into blooms brightened my mood every time I stepped into this part of the garden and the pollinators loved these flowers.

We had a mixture of self-seeded red valerian:

I discovered to my delight that hummingbird hawk-moths are particularly found of this plant and I spent many moments watching them flit around this space going from flower to flower.

We also had a mixture of self-seeded Nigella, Dame’s Rocket and Aquilegia, along with the climbing roses continuing to bloom:

The bed in the right-hand side border also put on a vibrant display of Crocosmia, which the bees loved:

August 2023

August 2023 was still a glorious month in this part of the garden. Everything was still blooming and because I had an array of plants I had raised from seedlings indoors since January 2023, I had plants to spare,  but nowhere to plant them!

I therefore settled on lifting some of the paving in front of the raised beds, digging it over well and mixing in some compost:

I then planted in a mixed plant display comprising an apricot rose known as ‘Sweet Honey’. This is a rose I picked up at Tatton Park flower show a few years ago, that had been living in a large pot. It was awarded rose of the year in 2020 and has a heady fragrance:

I also planted out a peony ‘Sarah Bernhardt’, which had also been living in a pot. I mixed in verbena bonariensis ‘Bueona Aires’, salvia ‘Salvator Blue’ and geum ‘Mrs Robinson’, all of which I grew from seedlings:

Overall, I wanted to create a layered planting effect in these borders, with planting at different heights and different colour combinations. Orange isn’t my go-to in the garden border, but it turned out well.

September 2023

By September 2023 the borders were starting to lull:

I struggled to dead head plants to prolong their flowering for as long as possible because I couldn’t get into the borders. I therefore decided that I needed to get access up through the bed so that I could actually look after the roses. I had gotten fed up of them being blown around in the wind and being unable to tend to them. Amongst all the beauty of the flowers that had grown were weeds, which further bothered me and ruined the overall look of the border.

So one afternoon I chopped the planting back and cleared the steps and a path so that I could actually get into the border. The Mr laid down some paving slabs  that we had lifted from other areas of the garden. This was just a temporary measure to make access easier and to suppress the planting underneath.

Here is a photo before I cleared the pathway:

And after:

I was then able to get up to the white climbing rose that sits in the far left of the border:

I was surprised by how beautiful the fragrance of this rose was. It stands out as the best for fragrance compared to the other climbing roses we have. We have Dame’s Rocket also growing in the border near the white rose and that too is highly fragranced.

This sparked an idea in my mind that it would make a perfect place to sit and enjoy; looking back through the border whilst surrounded with the fragrance.

After the pathway was cleared, the Winter weather started to draw in, the temperatures dropped and I left the garden to go to sleep for a few months whilst I pondered how I wanted to develop this border for 2024.

January 2024

In January 2024, the borders were looked rather sad and tired. To me, the Winter always highlights the lack of structure and where it is needed in the garden:

I reflected over the Autumn and Winter as to how I could create more structure in this space year round, without digging out what was already there. I wanted to retain the carefree and wild nature of the planting. I am quite happy to let things self seed in this area and just do some editing here and there.

So that brings us to February 2024 onwards. The Mr and I spent some rather intensive weekends working on this area through February and March this year and I will soon share the updates from that. I hope you enjoyed the post!