’Tis the season to be, er, replanting

AUTUMN is one of the best times of the year for adding new plants to the garden.

The soil is wet and warm and anything planted will have a chance to settle down before it has to start growing again in spring.

This year’s dying foliage can be easily cleared away to reveal the gaps in the borders where new plants are needed to fill out the show and spring bulbs unearthed by accident can be replanted without harm. Sometimes existing plants fail to thrive, but rather than despair over something that’s died, a better course of action is to work out why it failed and then identify something that would flourish in its place. In the absence of vine weevil or some other ravenous pest, the most common reason for plants failing is that they were growing in the wrong place. Different plants need a variety of growing conditions and while some are quite happy to rough it wherever they find their roots, others are more fussy and need a little cosseting. I’ve been giving lots of thought to what will thrive in my garden. It’s become a pressing issue as plans have been drawn up for the slope behind the house and I can finally see, on paper at least, where the new borders are going to be and how large a space they’ll occupy.

The site is south-facing but slopes towards the north and is shadowed in some places by trees, so I’ve got a mix of open and shadier spaces.

The soil is heavy clay and holds a lot of moisture. Fortunately there are lots of glorious plants that will relish just these conditions including feathery Astilbe, bold Rodgersia and almost every variety of Primula. Astrantias frequently find themselves in sunny borders, but in fact these cottage garden favourites are happier somewhere swampier and so too are both Iris pseudacorus and Iris sibirica, with its striking deep blue, narrow flowers.

The Corsican hellebore, Helleborus argutifolius, prefers drier conditions but I’m planning on growing it at the edge of the slope, which dries out much faster than the central area.

I’ve just potted up a dozen seedlings of this which I dug from my sister’s garden where it seeds itself around so enthusiastically she’s forever pulling it out and throwing it on the compost heap. Another friend turned up this week with a tray of seedlings plucked from her garden, including a nice clump of white Lilac and several Rosa glauca, which has wonderful blue-tinged foliage and produces flagon-shaped hips. All these seedlings, along with many others, are now squeezed onto the patio behind the house and they’ve even started working their way up the stairs that leads to the back door, making the trip to the recycling bin a bit of an obstacle course