There are many styles of gardening, from formal straight lines, to cottage gardening where anything goes… anywhere you plant it. The latter was always my form of gardening. If I saw a plant I liked, I bought it and plonked it in without a great amount of thought. I looked for a space, gave a passing thought to its planting requirements and tried to pop it in where at least there would be some contrast with the scheme around it. But that was about it. I suppose one reason for this was that I could never afford to buy a huge amount of plants in one go….therefore making planned planting schemes rather difficult.

And this kind of gardening works. You end up with fantastic borders containing a huge variety of plants, but with the downfall that many are really not situated in an appropriate position, both in respect to sun, water requirements and also size. Therefore you, well I do at least, spend a lot of time moving things around year after year, which is not necessarily very good for the poor little plants.

Of late I’ve been trying to be a little more thoughtful about area’s I’m planting up, thinking carefully about what I want to plant and what would look fantastic with it. I have bought some beautiful medium height aliums, which I am going to pair with long flowering grasses. Crews Hill found me a number of ferns for my new fern bed. Now, whilst a fern bed would look fantastic on its own, I wanted something more, something a little different. So…..along came some californian poppies which truly look great as their delicate petals rise up above the vivid greenery. Once both sets of plants establish themselves, it should look great!
It’s always good to mix it up a little, try it, you might be suprised at your hidden creative streak!