Our brief was to provide a new bed next to existing pool - to provide summer long riot of colour, using drought tolerant perrenials - with colour preferences to cool tones, the space (close to pool) is most often used for early evening aperitifs.
Plan - We suggested blocking the right hand opening to the outbuilding as not used for access - this helps provide a better backdrop for climbing plants to continue into corner.
We selected clematis, ceonothus, scabious in cream and blue, ajuga, echinacea white swan and other complementary perennial plants.
We underplanted with muscari and tete a tete dwarf daffodils for early spring colour and tall cream alliums to join the gap between spring and summer.
We included plants which are half-hardy such as cerinthe major and verbena bonsarensis, these perform very well locally and tend to reliably self-seed even if the main plant doesn't survive a hard winter.
We used local stone to edge the bed in keeping with the rest of this gardens existing landscaping.(The stone is dug up with just about each spadeful in these parts.. :S)
All the plants have had a good start this autumn as the mild, wet weather has given the plants a good chance to establish a good root system before we mulch against winter cold (-18 last year and a fweek long foot of snow...).
It is our preference to get plants in the ground in an available warm wet window in autumn to help plants get well established before they experience their first long hot and very possibly dry summer.
As we left the bed at the beginning of November. We will post updated photo's to see how this bed gets on through the coming seasons.
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