Beginner learn

Update Steeply Sloped Garden

I got a chance today to visit a garden we completed in the beginning of winter this year. Its one of my favourite parts of my job - going back to check and see how things are going in a garden that Ive planted months or even years before.

I approach these visits as if I were seeing a long lost friend again - with mixed feelings of excitement and trepidation. Youre really looking forward to seeing them, but youre also wondering whether time may have been unkind to your friendship.

As much as I research, and deliberate and finally decide on a design for a garden, there are always things that I havent bargained for, and sometimes things dont always turn out exactly as Im expecting. Sometimes a certain plant may not have worked in its situation, other times, weather or pests have taken their toll.

But often the hard work does pay off. Sometimes Im even pleasantly surprised to see how well things have taken. It may be a combination of plants that Im trying for the first time or a plant that does very well in its new home. But it always makes me happy to see one of my gardens thriving.

Today was one of those days, and it also happily reinforced my love affair with grasses.  The steep slope from the road up to the house, on which we planted mainly wild grasses is covered in lush green Aristida, and the bergundy plumes of Melinis are a lovely greeting as you drive into the property. Bearing in mind that the garden was planted at the beginning of a relatively dry winter, the growth has been amazing.

The only blight on the visit, was that white ants had eaten the bark off the base of 2 of the Crossberries that we planted on the bank, and in the process assigning them to the compost heap.