Four pages of readers’ gardens
Nature is a wonderful thing and we try to garden to encourage it. We have three bird feeding stations, bird baths, an area set aside as a wildflower meadow and a nectar border packed with buddlejas and species roses. The herbaceous bed is also designed with nectar production in mind, and here, the achillea, astrantia and eryngium ‘Jos Eijking’, not only look fantastic, they benefit birds, insects and butterflies, too.
The blue of the eryngiums this year has been intense and the amount of bees that feed on them is astounding.
Our ‘Long Border’ shrubbery is a mix of established shrubs, underplanted with border pinks and alpine dianthus. They’ve always been a favourite and taking cuttings allows us to replace older, straggly ones. This year they’ve been at their best and really put on a show. Their scent is really intoxicating.
Growing pots of strawberries in troughs has been a great success, too. We fixed troughs to the garage wall and draped them with netting to protect them from blackbirds. This method has produced a bumper crop, mainly because they get sun for much of the day. They’re easy to water and maintain and it’s proved to be a brilliant idea. Plants need to be replaced every other year with this method so, as soon as they finish cropping, I’ll pot up runners to grow on. The weather, though, has been challenging. The lack of rain here, in one of the driest parts of the country, has been a real trial for gardeners. Thankfully, when we finally got rain – constant over a 24-hour period – the water butts refilled, the grass revived and so did the plants. Sadly, our six-foot Prunus incisa ‘Kojo-no-mai’ finally succumbed to wind damage it sustained earlier this year. These shrubs are susceptible to wind scorch and this one had had enough. We took it out to make way for something new. It’s surprising how a vista can change just by making one move in a garden – that’s what gardening is all about.