Help me fill this border

[fireplacetiles]

Huge border to fill, help me pick some plants please! Clay soil, south west facing, about a mile from the sea so quite windy. Want a cottage garden feel, have fruit and veg growing elsewhere so don't really need that. Total novice so need ideas of what will fill this space. Thank you.

Crocus.co.uk (and others) have ready-made planting plans for borders.

You say you are a novice - do you enjoy gardening or just want something that can have minimal effort?

How wide and how long is it?

Make sure you have some repetition - not exactly the same plants necessarily but not one-of-everything.

But for sunny clay you will definitely want some roses so go and browse David Austin for some lush options. Then cranesbills (also a wide range of colours available), bulbs for spring and early summer (daffs, alliums especially), salvias, veronica/veronicastrum for height…. I can go on forever.

Thank you. It's about 5 metres long and nearly a metre wide. I am a novice but have the time and energy to spend on the garden so doesn't need to be totally low maintenance.

Currently has 3 plants, a self seeded eucalyptus, a silver birch and a hawthorn, all the other bits of green are coming through the fence from next door.

I have 2 jasmines sitting in pots, would they do well at the back, scrambling up the fence?

Do you like certain colour combinations?

I use a lot of evergreen plants dotted through the border so there is some colour and structure through the year. It’s always good to have different height plants so your trees and climbers will provide some height and then you need to medium and low plants too and think about what will flower when (so don’t buy everything in flower in one trip to the garden centre in May). 5x1 will soon fill up 😊

I have no experience of windy conditions, so don’t know specific plants for you (apart from Escallonia which is evergreen), but the RHS plant finder is really useful to put in all of your requirements.

I completely overplant to minimise weeding, and also try to think about “layering” so one plant flowers and goes over before something else comes up in the same place so I’ve got Allium and Tritellia bulbs with geraniums in the same area, Aquilegia and Echinacea, Poppies and Rudbeckia etc.

Get yourself some graph paper, look up heights and spreads, and play around. It will look bare when you first plant but it will fill in within a couple of years.

I have a big border. I have several verbenas, salvias, Japanese anemones, rue, peonies, oriental poppies scattered through it.

I’d get rid of the eucalyptus. They get massive and have huge roots.

Eucalyptus can be cut to 30 cms every year, and thus keep its juvenile foliage. Roses are a good shout, I’d put 5 in, look at David Austen and prioritise disease resistance, the smart thing would be to choose 5 the same, but that seems like a wasted opportunity to me, I would choose a colour and then go up in intensity, with the strongest colour nearest the house. Think about ground cover. Geraniums are very useful, hellebores, pulmonaria and sedums. Buy plants in 3s, 5s or 7s. I know a metre wide looks a lot when it’s empty, but it really isn’t. I would try to find space for a couple of smaller miscanthus, because they are so airy and look great through the winter. Then some campanula,agastache, asters, shasta daisies. While the border is empty scatter packets of seed, forget me nots, nigella and cosmos, and plant summer flowering bulbs.These will self seed forever after. In the Autumn add lots more daffodil bulbs, in irregular groups . Paint a D on a stone and place it in the middle of each group. Do not plant in lines. White borders can seem like a really good idea but they are tricky, cottage gardens suit pastels, pinks, blues apricots. Don’t be scared of yellow, but be a little wary of red, because it can disappear., except to clash with its neighbour. If you care about wildlife, choose single rather than double flowers.

Oh and I would put the silver birch in the lawn.

Loads of ideas up thread, but before planting, I’d dig in some soil improver, to loosen up the clay. Manure ( the bagged sort) and some grit.

I'd suggest the following:

https://proctorsnursery.co.uk/product/salvia-animo/ flowers forever and bees love it
https://proctorsnursery.co.uk/product/verbena-bonariensis/ again, bees love it
Both are really pretty
These two will really fill the border.
The rest is finessing.

If you can get a copy of Anna Pavord's border book she has ideas for every sort of border.

Helpfully she lists exact plants, tells you exactly where to put them and how to look after them through the seasons.

As someone who has never understood how to fill a border it's been invaluable

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Border-Book-Anna-Pavord/dp/1564584852

@fireplacetiles Both the salvia/verbena are also really easy maintenance, pest and disease resistant.

Thanks everyone for your advice, really helpful. Have made a list of your suggestions to carry round the nursery. Have also ordered a border pack from Crocus, thanks for the recommendation, that will get me started. Trying to sort the soil before they arrive, it is really heavy clay, a bugger to dig, just sticks to the spade in lumps, so doing a bit each day. Can I dig the hole, put in the plant then back fill with bought potting compost and a layer of the clay soil on top? Do I need to add anything else to the soil?

All soil ends up needing improving.

I would mulch it with a load of manure or other soil improver and let the worms do the job of mixing it in.

Clay soil and coastal here too. Things that grow well in my garden are viburnum, roses, euphorbia (some people aren’t keen as it’s so vigorous but I love it for structure), pale yellow-eyes grass, peonies and the little purple geraniums. Lots of other stuff works too but those are the easy wins.