Clearing out the conifers
The Hintons’ Dudley garden has a backbone of shrubs and conifers, and a beautiful selection of herbaceous perennials in-between.
Well, we finally did it! We’ve tackled the old middle bed, or at least the back of it. The dwarf conifers were put in when we first landscaped the garden and the back ones were past their best – our fault, we’d let them do their own thing for too long.
A couple of years ago a fox dug under one of them, causing it to lean over, and the others had become too big for us to gain access to the fence line. So, we cleared the back, dug it over and fed the soil, before replanting with a Fatsia japonica, Aucuba japonica and an elaeagnus. It’ll take a couple of years before the new plants gain any height, but they should complement the front nicely once they’re up. Since our big weekend tidy, we’ve added a couple of hebes, and our feature hebe flowered beautifully this year. It’s just a pity it has a shortlived flower. However, it filled the garden with bees and butterflies while it lasted. Elsewhere, the water lily is in full flower, and most of this year’s new frogs have left the pond but the hot weather must be proving too scary for a few who are still hanging around. The scabious is as vigorous as ever and has encroached too near to the holly, so I think we’ll move the latter in the autumn. We had planned to top up the bark chips in the back garden, but the thought of humping 30 bags of mulch in this heatwave has put us off. So I think we’ll have a relaxing weekend instead, sitting in the garden with a cool drink.