Something to fill borders

[rattlinbog]

We have an 100ft long London garden with borders on both sides. At the moment they are very barren. I tried planting some hydrangeas last year but they didn't survive. DH and I both work full time and I'm pregnant so we really can't dedicate loads of time to watering, pruning etc - we need something quite self sufficient but would love a bit of colour.

Would it be mad to sow wildflower seeds along the borders? Does this work?

Such a beginner - thank you everyone!!

What direction and how much light does each border get?

Thanks for your reply! South facing, lots of light.

I think wildflowers/ seed bombs/ seed shakers can take but they will take a while and not necessarily uniformly. What about lavender/ rosemary, these can cope with low quality soil too. You'll get colour from lavender and rosemary fills space. Really low maintenance (though you'll need to chop back post flowering on the lavender). And then have some areas for the wild flowers but it's lower stakes if it doesn't take.

Id be tempted to have a small tree at least on one side to break up the height and give you some shade for when you have a little one. If you have a local nursery you could go along and get some advice on your space and soil?

Don't underestimate the work needed for a wildflower meadow to look lovely!

I would fill it up with easy care perennials, echinacea, chrysanthemums, Michaelmas daisies, sedums, alchemilla mollis, day lilies, salvias, heleniums, hardy geraniums .

Shrub borders are the easiest thing to maintain and look after. Once they are established then they just need a prune once a year max and they can be ignored the rest of the time.

If you want to do this, go to the garden centre now and pick one or two shrubs that look lovely at the moment and then buy 6 of each (3 per border) and bung them in. They will get lots bigger so give them plenty of space. Check them once a week for the next couple of months to make sure they are doing ok and then in a couple of months do the whole garden centre cycle again.

By the end of the year you will have two lovely borders that are very low maintaence.

Hydrangeas need lots of water and dappled shade so they don't do well in south facing borders. Plus it was stupidly hot last summer.

You could sow some Cosmos seeds for a cheap easy to maintain border, they don’t need too much water.

They can look good among 'wildflowers' too - there's a couple of verges in our area sown with a mix including cosmos which look lovely at the end of summer and into autumn.

Hardy geraniums are good easy perennials, some of which spread well.

If it’s in full sun then lavender would be great. And they grow really well. I would then also pop in a few olive trees. Maybe some ornamental grasses. I planted my lavender and olive trees and then basically ignored them. They have done well.

This is great. Thank you everyone!

Hardy geraniums yes but give them restrictions after the first year or they take over the lawn

Had a similar dilemma recently and my conclusions were:

Carpet/ground cover rose
Salvia caradonna
Geranium rozana
Chosiya ternata for something evergreen
Fascia Japonica also for evergreen
Pieris Japonica also for evergreen
Lavendar
Phlox (either creeping or the normal one)
C overdam ornamental grass
Daylily
Verbena Boriensis at the back

Didnt go for all of the above but that was my shortlist. A lot of the above is violet (i like it) goes well with yellow so maybe get something yellow in there too if you do take the purple path.