The unintended consequences of working to targets
The weather has now gone back to normal and is sometimes dry, sometimes wet. Some of the showers have been only a few minutes long. As far as possible I have carried on through the changes – this is the great advantage of having sandy soil.
In my desperate attempts to reach my pot reduction target, I have been planting things in the front garden. This has resulted in the unintended but welcome consequence of my front garden looking a lot more like a garden than a campanula farm.
In front of the fence panel to the left of the garden, I have planted a Euonymus fortunei ‘Emerald ‘n’ Gold’. This is the same variety that I planted at the left of the thuja hedge in the back garden. To the left of the Euonymus I have planted some fox and cubs (Hieracium aurantiacum) which Sharon gave me. Some people think it’s a weed. I think it’s a nice plant. I also planted some alchemilla mollis next to my neighbour’s path, as I think I can rely on that plant to behave itself and not send out huge great flowering stalks for my neighbours to trip over. On the right I planted three oriental poppies. They will produce very big orange-red flowers, unless they are a different variety to the one I think they are. So that’s seven pots gone.
Front left of garden with euonymus, hieracium, alchemilla and papaver orientalis
And then I planted some geranium cinereum under the magnolia. The space used to be covered with osteospermum, but it has suffered a lot from two cold winters in a row and I would like to have something a bit less prone to frostbite alongside it. The flowers won’t clash.
Front garden by the magnolia grandiflora
So that’s three more pots gone. I have also done a mildly ruthless cull. When I dug up the viburnum I put some of it in pots (it layers itself to produce more plants) and so I had three viburnums. I think it’s unlikely that I will have room for even one viburnum in the new plan, but I don’t want to throw all of them away in case I change my mind. So I threw away one. I also disposed of an iris foetidus (I have several of these, split up from a plant kindly donated by my mum) and some lily of the valley (again, I have too many of these).
So that means I have 94 pots. This is a reduction of 35% and is only 24 off my target. Unfortunately I have no idea how I am going to get rid of another 24 pots before the end of the month. I will have to give the matter some thought.