Hello and welcome back to my blog! Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of my blog. Thank you for joining me over the last year and reading my gardening blog 🙂
Today’s post shows the planting I carried out over the last weekend, when the sun was still shining. I knew the rain was due to arrive in the coming week, so I focused on getting as much planting out as possible. I hope you enjoy seeing what I’ve been planting out!
Table of contents
The Wild Borders
Myosotis ‘Blue Ball’ (Forget me not)
Last year, I sowed some forget-me-not plants. I over-Wintered these in my greenhouse:
I was keen to free up space in my greenhouse, so I have been hardening these off for about two weeks. Over the last weekend, I planted these out in small groups beneath a variety of the roses in The Wild Borders:
The blue of the forget-me-not flowers will compliment the roses well and also help to retain moisture and repress weeds. I am happy for these to self-seed around The Wild Borders.
Aquilegia ‘Mrs Scott-Elliot’
I also planted out more aquilegia ‘Mrs Scott-Elliot’ that I grew from seedlings last year. I planted these out in a small group in a semi-shaded area next to the honeysuckle and bird feeders, as aquilegia are traditionally a woodland plant:
The aquilegia will mirror the groupings of aquilegia that are already established in the left-side border and flowered beautifully in 2023 and 2024:
These aquilegia are a mixture of the same variety and ones we inherited in these borders.
Gardenia jasminoides ‘Crown Jewel’
I then planted out a small evergreen shrub, which prefers a sheltered semi-shaded spot. This is Gardenia jasminoides ‘Crown Jewel’:
I planted this out in the right-side border, in between the two trees that I recently planted this year:
This little shrub will provide fragrant white flowers from June until September. It arrived with yellowed leaves, but has started to green up since planting out.
Clematis armandii ‘Apple Blossom’
I then turned my attention to planting out the final clematis on the arch walkway in The Wild Borders.
You may recall if you read my blog, that the archways in the left-side border both have Clematis ‘Apple Blossom’ planted on each archway. I am repeating this across all the archways in The Wild Borders, to create repetition, so I planted out the final clematis in situ:
Sweet peas
I have been hardening off the sweet peas that I have grown from seed again this year. I planted out four of these to grow up the arbour that I installed recently in the right-side border:
I will be planting out various groupings of sweet peas around the garden over the coming weeks, as well as gifting some to neighbours.
The Suntrap
I also carried out some planting in The Suntrap over the last weekend.
I focused most of my energy on adding to the foliage border in that area of the garden, which is the only shady part in The Suntrap. This is the area at the right-hand side nearest to our garage, which I showed you recently after I moved my ferns and astilbe there, and planted a new acer:
Dicentra ‘Spectablis’
The first plant I added was a bleeding heart plant (Dicentra ‘Spectablis’), which I have grown in the past. I love the graceful nodding flower plumes on dicentras. I bought this plant from our local garden centre and it was already in flower:
Fatsia japonica
I then added a small fatsia shrub, that was gifted to the Mr and I from his relatives as a cutting a number of years ago. I potted up the cutting and this has sat in a large pot on our patio in The Honeysuckle Nook since then.
I decided to plant this to the front of the foliage border:
The fatsia is looking quite yellow, but whatever was causing that should now resolve as it has been planted.
I am going to grow this fatsia as slightly more of a standard/tree shape and lift the canopy, so that it can be underplanted. To grow the fatsia in this way, I pruned out a second stem that had grown and I left just one main stem, which I will leave to grow as the main trunk:
This border is now looking like this:
Before (February 2025) and after (April 2025)
Compare the before and after over just a few months:
I love the combination of all of the different foliage shapes in this border! I have some foxgloves that I sowed from seed last year, which will be perfect added to this area of the garden. I may also add some into The Woodland Garden, where I already have a number of naturalised foxgloves:
Clematis montana ‘Elizabeth’
I then planted out another Clematis in The Suntrap, this one is Clematis montana ‘Elizabeth’:
This clematis has been planted to the right-hand side of the hydrangea tree:
I will be training this clematis to grow up the wall (there are wire supports) and eventually up the netting of the fruit cage. This is a very vigorous climber, and once it gets going, I will just leave it to ramble away. It does not need annual pruning and will only be pruned to control its size. It shouldn’t take long to cover up the wall and the netting!
You may recall that I already have this same clematis planted on the arbour in the left-side border of The Wild Borders:
This provided really pretty flowers last year:
We should be due more flowers again soon this year! This flowers in late Spring to early Summer and it will occasionally (as it did for us) provide another flush of later flowers too. All of these clematis combined will provide some early Spring interest in the gardens.
That’s all for today. It was a busy weekend of planting out, which was a really fun break from some of the more boring jobs I have been working on recently. The Mr and I are still working on those in the background and I will be sharing the reveal of those in due course!
I hope you are all able to get out in the garden when you can! Until next time, happy gardening 🙂
The Charming Nook 
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