Old English Garden - Herbaceous borders - lots of ivy - Please help me!

[RiaParkinson]

I live in an Old Vicarage which has a mature but very ill maintained garden

I spent a lot of last year stripping stuff out ( like lovely daisies that were overrunning a border but totally grassed in iikwim )

DP thought a lot of what i did was sacrilegious as i LOVE a mature look

I now have lots of border with barely anything in it .

Help me save face with dp by creating somthing lovely and old !

Michaelmus daisys spring to mind ....is that along the right lines?

What way does it face? What kind of soil do you have? How big? How keen a gardener are you?

Proper Gertrude Jekyll herbaceous borders are quite a lot of work but you can do stuff that looks pretty good that isn't that labour intensive.

Give me some answers and I'll give you some ideas

A few random thoughts ....

a border with nothing but herbaceous plants could look very forlorn and empty in winter and spring - it may be useful to add some shrubs for structure and some spring bulbs for early colour

Michaelmas daisies flower late in the season (and are prone to mildew) so you'd need to balance with something which flowers earlier

Do you have vast lawns? Do you want to keep them?

Are you a member of the local gardening society? Join now! They often have plant swaps in spring, which is a great way of finding bargains which suit local conditions.

.... now awaiting answers to spicemonster's quetions.

Spicemonster ( excited!) thanks!

it is an odd garden lots of 'bits' the main part of the border i am thinking of us south facing BUT and it is a big but opposite us is a wood so the garden gets shade and has a HUGE scots pine which is quite domineering

soil is good in parts with a SLIGHT tendency to clay but where we garden it the clay soon rectifies if that is possible!

The last people did very little but ONCE someone obviously loved it....

will try to put pics on profile

Ria - You need to buy Alchemilla Mollis, It is brilliant ground cover and the foliage and flowers are lovely, especially in the rain. It looks thoroughly gorgeous with Cat Mint, Johnson's Blue Geraniums and lavender which are all v easy to grow.

Some big box balls amongst perennial borders look lovely.

PMSL Ria this is exactly like what I did to the garden at our house last year! DH loved the overgrown look but I hated it, I got stuck in and now we have an erm..... sparse border .

I have no idea what to plant to get it looking nice again so will check back here soon.

The lavender may not like the shade so would have to be positioned carefully. Does the Scots Pine drop needles onto the flowerbeds? If so, the soil's likely to be quite acidic which will also influence what grows well there.

Alchemilla mollis is fabulous!

Okay, so south facing but not direct sun? Presume the scots pine is far enough away not to take away water/nutrients?

Now you've cleared it, prep, prep, prep. Dig in tons and tons of mulch as this is your one big change to improve the drainage and soil structure. If you haven't got your own compost, then mushroom is pretty good. Plan on a bit of paper - measure your plot and put in a few shrubs (am assuming you have space) to give structure.

I would then go and get one of those gardening books that help you plan by season and try and divide your space up into blocks - probably a couple of metres square for each. Then you want something that'll flower early like forget me nots (which you can interplant with bulbs), summer flower stuff (of which there is a ton and a half to choose from) and some late flowering stuff. Try to get a mix of heights and shapes - something like verbena bonariensis for example is a great herbaceous border plant because it's tall but it's see through so you can plant it in the middle of the border and still see stuff behind it.

So that's a tall small headed flower whereas something like echinacea has a very big daisy shaped flower so works really well next to it.

If you plan it all out on paper, you will be able to see what works and what doesn't and move stuff if you need to.

Also, go for drifts and big areas of one thing rather than little dotty bits. If you have a long border, repeating the theme works really well.

oooh thankyou all

the scots pine does not impact borders apart from dappled shade

had to nip and get pen!

Spicemonster it is quite a long border probably 50-60ft - so far the only thing i have done is the beginnings of a lavender hedge down one side - over a wall - the other side os lawn iyswim!

Wow - you lucky thing!

hmm! you have scared me spicemonster - thats only a guess (prob totaaly wromg )

I am thinking to start early in season so that i can buy tiny (ie cheap!) bits of plants that will grow..... i am going to look online ....

the border has path on oneside and tiny wall and lawn on other

do i therefore put tallest plants in the centre or would that look silly??

I didn't want to scare you! Sorry - I'm a bit overexcited

I would put tall stuff towards the back but if there is a wall there, depends how tall it is. If it is quite a big wall, you get a thing called a rain shadow where no rain falls close to the way so you can't plant very close. On the upside, if your border is quite deep, this gives you a little gangway to creep about in and fiddle with things from the back. If you buy stuff small, be prepared for it to take a while to look ready. While you're waiting, you could plant annuals to give it some colour (any annual seeds like cornflower etc will do the job). And when you plant, space for eventual size, rather than current - it's one of the biggest mistakes people make, cramming stuff too close together

the wall suppotrs the border

put some (rubbish) pics on profile spice!

found a great website actually CROCUS will do link later when not as busy

this shop is so helpful for border buying!

Oh yes - crocus is good for that! Had forgotten.

Ria - I don't know if you have a local Morrisons supermarket? I find their plants absolutely brilliant and very good value. I buy a lot of their plants and am gradually transforming my garden from a place filled with plants that looked horribly municipal, plus naff huge rockery (now removed) to beautiful herbaceous borders. Mostly thanks to Morrisons.

oooh! There is one i could travel to but i think the plant selection to be quite tiny...

worth a trip though thankyou swedes

had dp digging up trees and removing another 10,000 unwanted bushes in his lunch hour

Very good for the spirit!

I wish they did Morrisons plants online. They would make a fortune. I got carried away for fifteen minutes with that Crocus website and my wheelbarrow now totals £176.58 [crying]

lol lol lol

it is FABULOUS isn't it?

have you ordered?

I have found really good places to get cheap plants are B&Q and Homebase. Got some gorgeous lime heucheras in Homebase last year on buy one get one free.

Do you have a greenhouse ria? or could you rig up one of those little plastic ones? Because plug plants are the cheapest way to go to get lots of stuff (or grow your own stuff from seed) but you do need somewhere to grow stuff on if you've got a fair amount

no greenhouse but lots of windowsills

scrub that - six kids- no time for pricking out!

Six kids ?

Plugs then - you could definitely do plugs. No pricking out and some of the older ones (unless you're like that lady in california ) could help with watering and planting on.

Can I recommend this nursery's design service,
www.woottensplants.co.uk/border_design.asp

It only costs £40 and if you buy the plants they suggest, then they refund this cost.
They did a design for our previous garden and it was lovely, as is the quality and range of their stock.

thankyou pannacotta i will look on there now