Fork it - August 2011
Feeling hot, hot, hot!
No, I’m not talking about hot flushes (acupuncture sorted those out, thank goodness), but my hot colours border, which looks its best in August.
We first planted it up for my 40th birthday renovating an area that had bindweed, which my husband painstakingly dug out - we had learnt from previous experience never to rotivate soil that has bindweed, as it just cuts up the root into smaller pieces, propagating it to create lots of new weeds!
To discourage the weeds we covered the whole border with mulch matting after laying a trickle hose up and down the border. New plants need to be kept well-watered and delivering water straight to the roots is much more efficient than spraying from above with a normal hose.
We then placed the plants in situ, according to my plan, before cutting the matting. This can be rather fiddly, as you should cut a cross and fold back the triangles, rather than cut out a whole square of matting and you also have to put the soil in a bucket before backfilling the hole, to stop the matting getting covered in earth! When all the plants were in, we covered the matting with bark chips which, although more expensive, look much better than wood chips. The effects of the trickle hose and large amounts of blood, fish and bone in the planting holes were amazing. We planted in May and by August, the border looked as if it had been established for a couple of years.
For the first 5 years the border looked great, but the disadvantages of using mulch matting then became apparent. I had grouped each plant in threes or fives, so that they could form large clumps, but the matting prevented them from expanding easily and needed to be cut again. However some plants with runner-type roots loved the matting and treated it like an adventure playground, running underneath it to pop up in other plants’ holes! As it is a mixed border, some spaces were for annuals, but I found myself cutting new holes each year to fit around the changing shapes of the plants and also because I couldn’t always find the holes under the bark.
So for my 50th birthday renovation, we removed the matting, dug over the soil and divided the perennials that had become tired-looking. We re-laid the trickle hose so that it is just below the surface of the soil – we kept on putting the fork through it when the matting covered it!
We have kept the shrub backbone of the border – a berberis and a purplish elder to provide the dark foliage background, interspersed with the shrubs hypericum, potentilla, azara serrata and kerria which provide yellow flowers over 6 months. The next tier are the large perennials, 3 yellow and 3 orange kniphofia (red hot pokers) provide the drama, while lysimachia “Firecracker” and persicaria “Red Dragon” add dark foliage contrasts. No hot border would be complete without dahlias and we have put in an orange one and the gorgeous scarlet-flowered, dark-leaved “Bishop of Llandaff” (pictured). Acid yellow/green accent hues are provided by alchemilla mollis (lady’s mantle), nicotiana “Lime Green” and euphorbia.
I always have annuals in the border to extend the flowering season into early autumn and this year I will be relying on them to fill gaps as the border gets re-established. Stalwarts that I grow from seed are tithonia rotundiflora (Mexican sunflower), ricinus (castor oil plant), eschscholzia (California poppy) and amaranthus (love-lies-bleeding), both the lime green and red/purple varieties.
