All the young trees were putting out leaves and getting going -
The new borders on the South Lawn opposite the Rose Terrace were still relatively sparse, but that was not because of poor growth. It was because of my planting philosophy. Accepted wisdom suggested that you should always plant far more plants than you needed so that they would cover the ground quicker and reduce the need for weeding. Then you were supposed to dispose of the surplus by digging them up later when they were touching. While working for the council, we used to plant nine shrubs to the square metre to achieve this, so in the space which a single Berberis would ultimately occupy, for example, you could imagine nearly a hundred plants going in. Obviously, this is where the logic falls down, as no one, not even some of the Parks Superintendents I worked for would be as extreme or ridiculous as that. Instead, what they would do was still plant nine to the square yard, but put next to them nine other shrubs in the next square yard, on the assumption that every shrub would eventually stop growing when it had reached a spread of one square yard. It's all rubbish. Most established wisdoms are. They only survive because nobody questions them. The point is that plants grown in such close proximity soon get their roots entangled with one another, competing for nutrients, and a single plant in the same space will inevitably grow faster and sturdier if you have done your soil preparation right and keep the weeds under control, which in itself is part of the soil preparation. So I used to plant my shrubs and herbaceous material in enough space to contain their final spread, not just their first year's growth.
Additionally, I had another stipulation for planting distances. If a herbaceous plant, for example, is listed as growing to a spread of two feet, then it is absolutely right to plant individuals within clumps two feet apart. However, where that clump touches on a clump of a different type, then it is prudent to plant the plants at the edges of the clump slightly further away, so that the two different groups do not try to swamp one another. I like my clumps to slope off at the perimeters so that they appear to be almost separate from adjacent groups, without leaving large expanses of soil around them. It's a very precise art, requiring experience. Of course, by economising on the number of plants per square yard as above, in the initial stages there would be quite a bit of bare soil. Access to all those nutrients would allow the plants to bulk up quicker, though, and they would be all the more robust for it.
For this reason, the mixed tree, shrub and herbaceous schemes in the new borders looked quite empty for a while, something which did not perturb me in the slightest -
By this time, the Rose Terrace was flowering, although the Verbenas which were interplanted amongst the roses had not quite come into their own yet. Don't worry, they soon would. The colour scheme was the purple Verbena rigida creeping between the white roses, and the related variety V. rigida 'Polaris' showing as a pale lavender-infused white under the pink roses -
See how the narrow-waisted lawn swells towards the house to take in the whole width of the terrace?
Still early in the season, so the picture isn't as clear as it might be to show how the Verbenas complement the roses, but here's a closer look, showing how the lawn broadens away to the south, enclosed by the newly-planted borders -
There were some really nice young plants in those borders working hard at bulking up. Pity I won't be able to show them at maturity. Pity some of them didn't make it too. Sad story for later.
No comments:
Post a Comment