Making a start on the plans for Autumn 2024 in The Wild Borders…

Hello and welcome back to my blog 🙂

The post today is to show you all the start of some Autumn jobs that have been sitting in my mind for a while now and that I am finally beginning. I hope you enjoy seeing what I have been getting up to and the changes it will start to bring to the garden.

The changes I am focusing on today are in The Wild Borders.

I have written a few times about The Wild Borders, which I firstly introduced in April 2024: Introducing: The Wild Borders

This is an area that has changed a lot already since January 2023, as you can see from the photos below.

The Wild Borders are comprised of two borders on the left and right side. They have a small set of steps dividing them, which allows you to get into the borders and look at the plants up close.

The right side border comprises predominantly of inherited croscosmia and honeysuckle:

The left side is the real star of the show and is the area the Mr and I have focused on since 2023. It includes four climbing roses, along with self-seeded love-in-a-mist (nigella), sweet rocket and red valerian).

Here is how the left side of the border has developed since February 2023:

Some of the edits I have been planning to the area this year have included wanting to remove the verbena that I planted this year on the right side of the border.

My vision to increase the soft-dreamy planting did not quite come to life as I envisaged due to the verbena growing much, much taller than anticipated. Even if it was shorter, I felt its vertical structure just wasn’t quite right where I had it growing with roses. I also found the colouring too vivid for that area and I wanted to strip the colour palette back to pinks, whites and soft blues, to create more of a flow and harmony.

As you can see from the below photos, the area had recently become quite a tangled mess with the verbena:

Here is a photo below showing how tall the verbena had grown. I missed the timing for giving it ‘the Chelsea chop’, which would have helped with shortening it, but I think even if I had done that, it was less than ideal where I had planted it. I think the contrast with the round bush shape of the rose started to look clunky and awkward. Its foliage is also slightly rough, so walking past it means it catches on your clothing and it feels rough to the touch:

Since I began thinking about moving the verbena, I also decided that it would look better with a solid wall behind it. I have seen it planted this way before and I like how it accentuates the vertical lines of the verbena and brings more focus to its flower heads.

I therefore dug up the verbena near the roses last week and planted them in large grow bags that I had used earlier this year for growing tomatoes in: (Growing cherry tomatoes outside in grow bags)

I have placed the grow bags along the back of our property, where it borders the garden:

I am hoping that the new position allows this plant to shine in its own right, rather than competing with other plants. It is a plant I want to keep due to its long flowering period and the benefits it brings for wildlife.

I have loads of additional verbena in pots that I plan to plant out in more grow bags (and also give some verbena away). I will place the additional grow bags all the way along the back of the property. The Mr suggested we could remove some of the slabs and plant directly into the ground here, which is something we’ll explore in the future. For now, we are trialing out the idea with the grow bags, which will allow us to see if the verbena is a good fit here.

So far, I like how when you look through the windows from inside, you see the verbena flower heads floating in front of the windows. If I use the Chelsea chop next May to reduce the height of the verbena slightly, it should reduce its height and create a haze of colour in front of the windows that you can also see through into the rest of the garden.

Looking at the right-hand side border of The Wild Borders, I am much happier with how it looks now the verbena has been removed. It allows the rose ‘Sweet Honey’ to stand out as a specimen plant in its own right, rather than being crowded out and the area looking messy, though there is still a lot I want to change in the area:

All of the crocosmia is soon going to be dug up and removed from that border, along with the bush of honeysuckle. I want to link the borders to each other by repeating the same planting and design ideas across them.

Hopefully this change will be one we are happy with. There are many more to come!

That’s all for today. I have just received the clematis that I will be planting out in The Wild Borders soon, so stayed tuned for those changes and many others 🙂

Happy gardening!