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New border soil questions
Jellyfire
Posts: 1,139
Instead of tidying up and weeding in preparation for this weekends open gardens, I decided to dig up some of the lawn to increase the size of a border and improve the flow of the garden. Ooops. My problem is that I seem to have unearthed a bit of a midden, literally.
The border in the back of the picture is pretty much neutral soil, but the new bit Ive extended basically consists of flint, pottery, bone, oyster shells, old glass, bits of metal and ashes. Ive taken off 4 or 5 barrowloads of rubble, thats pretty normal for my garden, but this was obviously a midden for the last few hundred years as however deep I go its still compacted old rubbish. The back end is better for a few feet but then I hit the solid stuff.
Ive tested the soil here and its completely alkaline. What soil there is, is bone dry dust. Im going to raise the level with some log roll by four or five inches, and the plan was to fill the top layer with compost and then bark chips. So I'll only really end up with about a foot of proper soil.
My question is do you think the soil PH will change significantly long term with some new material added, or would I be better off working with what is there and getting some alkaline/drought loving plants in there instead?
The existing border is only purple and blues, and I want to keep that theme, I was planning on some similar perennials to what is in the rest of the border: Campanulas, Peonies, geraniums, echinops and the like, but now wondering if I'd be better off putting some lavender or something in, or whether the new top layer will not suit that. This part of the garden is shady as there are trees all around it, but this particular triangle gets full sun most of the day
This is some of what Ive taken out, and is basically what it is like beneath the thin layer of soil you can see on the pics.
The border in the back of the picture is pretty much neutral soil, but the new bit Ive extended basically consists of flint, pottery, bone, oyster shells, old glass, bits of metal and ashes. Ive taken off 4 or 5 barrowloads of rubble, thats pretty normal for my garden, but this was obviously a midden for the last few hundred years as however deep I go its still compacted old rubbish. The back end is better for a few feet but then I hit the solid stuff.
Ive tested the soil here and its completely alkaline. What soil there is, is bone dry dust. Im going to raise the level with some log roll by four or five inches, and the plan was to fill the top layer with compost and then bark chips. So I'll only really end up with about a foot of proper soil.
My question is do you think the soil PH will change significantly long term with some new material added, or would I be better off working with what is there and getting some alkaline/drought loving plants in there instead?
The existing border is only purple and blues, and I want to keep that theme, I was planning on some similar perennials to what is in the rest of the border: Campanulas, Peonies, geraniums, echinops and the like, but now wondering if I'd be better off putting some lavender or something in, or whether the new top layer will not suit that. This part of the garden is shady as there are trees all around it, but this particular triangle gets full sun most of the day
This is some of what Ive taken out, and is basically what it is like beneath the thin layer of soil you can see on the pics.
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Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.