Hello and welcome back to my blog 🙂
Today’s post will show you more jobs I have been carrying out in The Wild Borders. Enjoy!
A new wood pile for wildlife and a sprinkling of autumn bulbs
The Wild Borders have recently become unkempt and I will therefore be spending some time tidying up sections over the coming months.
I will still retain the self-seeded plants, but I will be neatening up the borders, until they are ready to spring back into life next Spring and Summer.
The area I worked on over this weekend included underneath the arched seat, that the Mr and I installed earlier on this year as part of my redesign of the borders.
As a reminder, here is a photo of how that area was looking in July of this year:
Fast forward to November this year, the area was looking quite different…
Underneath the seat had grown rather weedy and unkempt:
I therefore started off by thoroughly weeding and mulching the area:
I then decided to use up some off cuts of wood that I had collected from building our garden shed from recycled wood in late Summer 2023:
I haven’t yet posted about the shed, but I will share that in due course, as I have some minor jobs to carry out on it.
These were all the offcuts I had left stored for months:
I started by piling up the wood in layers until I made a full pile underneath the seat:
The benefits of a wood pile in the garden (and why you should add one to your garden) include:
- It will attract insects such as spiders, beetles, woodlouse and centipedes, as well as slugs and snails;
- Attracting the above will in turn benefit birds, frogs and hedgehogs, providing them with natural feeding stations;
- They are attractive and blend in well in a naturalistic garden design.
If you have logs, definitely use those for a natural effect. If I had old logs that is what I would have preferred to use, but I just reused what I had to hand.
The wood pile, along with the bark mulch, will naturally repress weeds from growing. This is a very sheltered and shady spot, which can be annoying to weed due to having to reach underneath the seat. Therefore, creating the wood pile makes my life a bit easier in that part of the garden.
I then continued in that area by weeding around the white climbing rose, feeding the rose with some new compost around its base, along with bonemeal mixed into the earth. I then topped up the area with a fresh layer of bark chippings to prevent anything from re-growing.
I finished off the seating corner by adding in some pretty pink cyclamen, to add a touch of brightness to the corner and some visual interest when there isn’t much else to look at during this time of year:
The cyclamen are hardy and should come back every year.
For those that are interested, Cyclamen grow best in a semi-shady to shady spot. They grow well when they are sheltered from the elements, such as heavy rain, because that can cause their foliage to rot. Underneath a tree or hedgerow are good positions for cyclamen.
You will note that by planting them near to the seat will provide a sheltered spot and mimics them being sheltered by other planting.
Two new evergreen clematis
I told you in my last post about how I was due to plant some new evergreen clematis in this area soon.
Well, these arrived in the last week or so, and I therefore planted out two of the three clematis on the arch walkway, along with adding garden netting.
Apparently this task was at the height of my capabilities and I was therefore closely supervised by our neighbour’s cat whilst putting up the netting on each archway:
I cannot plant the final clematis out until I have cleared the right hand side border and the Mr and I have installed the new archway that is going to go in that border. The third and final clematis will be planted on that archway.
As a reminder of what the right hand side border currently looks like, here is a photo taken recently:
I am using the same evergreen clematis throughout the arches in The Wild Borders, which is clematis armandii ‘Apple Blossom’. You’ll recall that this is the same variety that I planted on the archway that leads to The Sun Trap.
Clematis ‘Apple Blossom’
Clematis ‘Apple Blossom’ is a vigorous evergreen climber with leathery elongated leaves, with the new foliage being slightly bronzed; that will add some interest in early Spring.
The flowers have deep pink buds, opening to white blooms that are blushed with soft pink and they are almond fragranced.
If the flowers are left on the plant, they may produce some attractive fluffy seedheads for Autumn.
My design plans
A. Successive flowering THROUGHOUT THE YEAR
My plan is to create a succession of flowering throughout The Wild Borders, as there is a gap in early Spring when there is little visual interest. I imagine having this clematis flowering on all the archways (as well as the other clematis montana ‘Elizabeth’, which I planted and have been training on the arched seat). This should provide a spectacular display in Spring before the roses start to bloom, as well as a lovely scent.
The clematis montana ‘Elizabeth’ already gave a brief glimpse into its future blooming capabilities earlier this year:
B. REPETITION WILL CREATE RHYTHM AND MOVEMENT
By repeating the same climber three times throughout The Wild Borders, it will create a sense of continuity, rhythm and movement throughout the borders to tie them together.
C. VIGOROUS CLIMBERS WILL QUICKLY COVER AN AREA
These clematis don’t look like much now, but these are vigorous climbers and I expect they will take off in Spring 2025. Their foliage will contrast very well with the climbing ivy and the roses.
My long-term goal is to allow both varieties of the clematis (‘Apple Blossom’ and ‘Elizabeth’) to scramble up and over each archway and then train them over the walls in time. I think this will give a really wild and beautiful effect. The pebble dash used on all the walls isn’t my favourite, so adding some plants to cover this will improve the look of the area and distract the eye from the pebble dash.
D. EVERGREEN CLIMBERS PROVIDE YEAR-ROUND STRUCTURE IN THE GARDEN
These clematis will also add some evergreen structure to The Wild Borders, which is important because we have very little evergreen structure in the current planting scheme.
That’s all for today. I really enjoyed using up the old wood that was cluttering up another area of my garden and using it to benefit wildlife.
More changes are afoot in the garden. Keep reading my posts if you want to see how things develop 🙂
Happy gardening!
The Charming Nook 
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