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Bare earth or ground cover?
I like to see bare earth around a plant. I like to see a plant's shape and form rather than see it poking through a mass of ground cover. This does not mean that plants cannot complement each other nor does it apply to climbers or spring bulbs.
What do you think?
Last edited: 16 May 2016 13:55:07
In London. Keen but lazy.
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Hi
I prefer the Chelsea Flower Show jam them all in myself, and I love the staggered/layered planting look - and it cuts down on weeds.
However I'm 2 years into a new, large garden so I'm stuck with the gaps for years to come as I can't afford the Chelsea-scale planting!!!
I long for the days where I eventually get to 'thin out' ....
To me bare earth is just asking for weed invasions and I spend enough time weedinga s it is without having more to hoe. Well planned plantings with understorey ground cover and then taller plants coming through are far better and you can play with colours, forms and textures of foliage and flower.
No bare earth. Cram as much as you can in.
I like bare earth, straight lines, uniformity.
But I will also add; most of my plants are surrounded with blue slate rather than au natural!
After a few weeks I just get fed up with forgetmenots and pulmonaria. I just want to pull them out so that I can see what's underneath properly.
We use wood chip in the beds - so virtually no weeds in our beds and easy to pull out by hand, however bare earth around plants means that you can hoe right up to them - I think it is a question of what you prefer B3. I think that wood chip (if added when thoroughly dry) can help to keep slugs away as they don't like the unevenness of the chip but gravel would probably work even better.
While I agree about forget-me-nots - they are after all biennial so done once they've flowered - I just cut back the pulmonaria once it has finished flowering so it grows fresh foliage. Same with hardy geraniums and geums and potentillas and so on. I also use carex buchananii as ground cover and primulas which then get smothered by hostas as they emerge and get big. It's all about following on.
My old head gardener I worked under, had us fork the beds to a fine tith to complement the shrubs, then the parks superintendent would shout at us to cover the gaps of dirt with plants, .........I still think my old head gardener was right, but that's the joy of gardening we all got our opinuon.
True TT
Obelix. That's pretty much what happens in my garden, but I still like to see a bit of naked soil
will have a look at the carex b