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Why does my garden look raggedy?

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  • gardeningfanticgardeningfantic Posts: 1,019

    purplepoppy wonderful garden.. i also favour the cottage garden to.. looks after itself lot time.. self seeds and i just love yr path..image

    i feel the hot weather has taken its toll. we had rain at week for lot in a month and a half.. so been hosing. but cnt water all of the garden as we are on water meters here.. so pay for what we use..image our grass is near on all brown adn dead lookin still. and i have had to cut soem plants down due to lack of refreshement..

     

  • nutcutletnutcutlet Posts: 27,444

    It's unusual for this area of the country (Peterborough) to be still green when others have gone brown. My ponds are still more or less at winter levels.



    In the sticks near Peterborough
  • Thanks so much for the kind comment, Gardeningfantic!  Really appreciate it (especially when I simply see everything that needs to be fixed!).  I hope that your garden rejuvenates soon, too.

    Just an update, I've just bought a bunch of July / August flowering perennials from Crocus (hard to resist when they're on sale).  I got a couple of varieties of salvias, some penstemons, alstroemerias, and phlox. I'm also going to try and get some bedding plants.

    But mulling everything over, it suddenly occurred to me that I have not seen any worm casts recently round my beds, nor many worms (at all) when I dug the soil recently.  I think the compaction has become a real problem, and perhaps I didn't mulch / dig in as much homemade compost as I should have at the beginning of the year.  So I've bought some Levington's farmyard manure and will mix it with my compost, and just mulch about 4 inches or so around the beds - I can't dig it in with so many plants in the beds.

    Hopefully that'll do the trick...image

  • bekkie hughesbekkie hughes Posts: 5,294
    I think we need pics of the garden when the new plants go in image
  • I would certainly recommend forking the soil when you mulch, push the tines deep in and wiggle it about a bit, then your soil will lose some of its compaction. A lot of the garden centres have started putting their plants on sale, so spend some money on things like cosmos or pelargoniums to fill in the gaps. If you repeat groups of the same plant in all the empty spots, it will just stitch it all together and enhance what is already there.
  • me londonme london Posts: 119

    Water! A south face garden and watering once a week may be a struggle for the plants in the summer. I water mine every day in the heat.. Wish the heat was back now tho!!

     

  • artjakartjak Posts: 4,167

    pansyf, what a lovely gardenimage

    I would suggest drifts of white Cosmos for next year, grown from seed (pinched out to help them bush out) and ammi major (seeds from Sarah Raven) which last longer than Orlaya Grandiflora, but gives a similar meadow/cow parsley look. Very handy for filling gaps in cottage style borders.image

  • Thanks for all the advice and suggestions!  I will definitely fork as much as I can and the cosmos and pelargoniums are a brilliant idea.  Will try and get those seeds, as you recommend, Artjak. 

  • artjakartjak Posts: 4,167

    image

  • chickychicky Posts: 10,409

    I've come late to this thread - was going to suggest phlox are great from about now til end of August - but i see you have already bought oneimageimage

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