A new herb garden

Well, today (4th September) I am going to attempt a box-edged herb garden. It's heavy on space saving design so it won't be as full of herbs as it really should but I find I'm starting to get meaner on using up the lawn space. I've used my vouchers (I'd earned £20 worth of free plants this season with another tenner already on the card) to get two trays of box plants. Box is pretty expensive but it's slow growing so a topiary pyramid or sphere will have taken years to produce. As I've learned from reading Monty Don's book, it's best to take cuttings (by pulling off a stem with the 'spur' and potting those up). It will take a while to get bushy but will save you a fortune if you have a big border to edge. Patience is a virtue in the garden as it is in life and I've found now I've accepted that it's actually a joy to find growth a year or two down the line, especially if you have forgotten you've planted something. This is how it now looks, with the box in pots ready to be planted.














So, at the moment I am hoping to put in a swirl shape with a larger curve at one end but hours down the road I will probably have changed my idea and incorporated another shape. It all depends on how much box I have. With all the talk of huge cuts in the public sector (I work in a library) I am now going to reign in the spending in our garden because I should be saving instead. (Some hope). I have this sign in my kitchen which seems to be more relevant right now than ever.

















Anyway, I shall return to my blog later and fill you in on what's happened.

8 hours later.
Phew, it's done and so am I. Done in, that is!
Why does everything take so much longer, cost so much more or be much harder than you first expected? Maybe because the sense of achievement at the end is worth the effort? Or maybe just because I underestimate the time it will take, money it will cost.

Well, first thing, I sat outside with a sketch book and doodled away at some shapes, using a Rosemary Verey gardening book with knot garden designs for some inspiration. Due to the small space I was using I could not put in a knot garden design, it would have been too crammed in and therefore wouldn't have worked. So I am working on a very informal swirl as I mentioned earlier. I am a lover of curves (hence the bottom!) over straight lines. I find them very easy on the eye and more natural looking in a garden. I had got the shape down to two designs, asked Luke, he chose the one I didn't like as much so I tried out both shapes with my box plants, as you can see here.




















I took photographs to compare them and then free styled a little to get to my chosen shape. Luke looked it over for me and tweaked the circle a little and then it was digging over the ground (compacted from when we dug up the old cherry and worked around the greenhouse base) and re-using the turf to create an edge around the box.



I found countless worms (always a good sign for the quality of the soil) as well as some broken glass, a lot of pebbles and a few stones. I worked with a nearby pot to collect the stones and a trug to collect the weeds and roots as wherever I dig in this garden I always seem to end up with at least one old tree root which threatens to whip me viciously as I drag it from it's home underground. Today I had four lengths of tree root to dig up. Several cups of tea and short breaks to chat to Luke meant that it wasn't too arduous but rather a long process but I finished the main work by six p.m. I decided to move the rosemary I already had planted by the conservatory to make it the feature inside the small circle ad I emphasised the shape by clipping the rosemary into a sphere.
















It all looks fairly underwhelming at the moment but in a year or two with careful clipping it will shape up nicely, I hope. I had reserved my one golden box sphere for the other circle but may well try out the standard Bay I currently have in a pot by my front door. This will give it some height as well as make this larger circle more dominant. That's tomorrow's job though. I had a good tidy of the garden junk afterwards and sat outside to eat the dinner Luke had cooked for us both. Very agreeable!