176E - How mighty are the strong?

 Gardener's World  (TV) is my go-to garden information guide, that is not a secret. Last week Adam Frost said something that made me think. Or rather, he asked a question: should gardeners plant only those plants that easily survive our current climate, or should we make the effort to grow plants that are struggeling with it?

My front plant bed.

   So I asked myself: didn't I decide recently to just plant the species that have proven to take my soggy heavy clay in winter and my summer concrete in their stride? This decision was the effect of my frustration and lack of funds. Buying new lovely perennial  seeds, bulbs or plants, only to see them struggle and then die within a season, is actually shitty and silly, and a waste of money. But when everyone does the same, and only uses the same limited range of survivors, then we are stuck with a very limited range of plants. Because growers aren't silly either, and have to earn their living with it, so I fear they will only grow the same survivors.

My beloved rose in the raised bed

Take my beloved Desdemona rose. She can live her best life only because she's in the raised bed. My other two roses with their feet in the clay, are struggling, despite expensive rose fertiliser, extra water, dilligent deadheading and peptalks. They are alive, but that is it.

The same goes for the huge fennel that shares the raised bed with Desdemona. I have another fennel, a red one, pining in the hot bed, which is not a 100th of the size of the one in the bed on the right.

One of my garden neighbours complained about her seedlings which simply did not come up this year. My seedlings were also disappointing. Is it our soil? Our skills? Both?

My 'hot' border

   In my hot border the 'cool' plants (for lack of a better word) are doing great. Take a look: the asters (no colour yet), the sedum (same), the grasses, the white gauras, the wormwood, the teasels, they are doing fine and are spreading. But the crocosmia, the expensive redleaved shrubs, the rust coloured lilies, the many orange/yellow kinds I have planted: sad strugglers they are, so far. Except the self-seeded buttercups, they are doing great and trying to take over my entire garden.

The result is that it isn't 'feeling hot, hot, hot'🎶, but looking green, green, green. Very restful, but that wasn't the plan. It should be my little pad of tropical South-America in Brielle!

   Perhaps I should dig it over and turn it into a Japanese Zen garden. No, only joking, I can't afford that.

Forest bathing, just about

Very cool, though. But impossible, I cannot see myself rent a crane to lift the huge rocks (to create the mountain) over the ditch. No, that's not happening.

A little positivity: my Physostegia has settled in my middle bed. She's on the verge of flowering, so there will be photos soon. She has gone walkabout, and forced my shocked scabiosa to the edge of the paving, where it is now sulking. That is a thing: plants love to walk! I can't blame them, always staying in the same spot, boring!

Along the Watersingel, where I walk Puck, has been a huge lythrum for years. I adore it. So last autumn I waited until I could gather some seeds, and sowed them next to my frog pond. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

Lythrum, which we call cats tails

   To my joy, this has worked. She has chosen a spot in the middle of my woodpile, next to the papyrus, that has walked herself out of the pond and thought the woodpile a good spot too. The lythrum colours beautifully with the buddleia on the other side of the frog pond, and with the verbena bonariensis next to her. This morning a large, stunning dragonfly perched on the papyrus. Obviously it flew away just as I wanted to take a photograph...just my luck. That's just the way it is...

This week I have added an extra page of photos, because there is a lot to enjoy.

   Have a lovely weekend!

Renée