This was my garden ten days ago wearing its late winter clothes of dead grass “stems” and perennials with their seed heads. Normally I try and tidy the garden in late winter (February) as it catches precotious cool-season grasses and other perennials before they starts growing. Such an early start is also important as it …
Soil Management for Perennial Meadow Planting Schemes Americans mulch and Europeans don’t and arguments rage between those that do and those that don’t. Like many generalisations there are more exceptions than truths, but apparently an over reliance on bark mulches in American landscaping has triggered a knee jerk reaction against them. In a recent book …
The introduction of ornamental grasses into planting plans was one of the most significant changes to occur within garden design in the past twenty years. Through their inclusion amidst an evolving planting pallet of perennials, contemporary gardens took on a naturalistic feel, far removed from the stiff block plantings of traditional herbaceous borders; grasses introduced …
The popularity of perennials in contemporary planting schemes is increasingly linked to the movement towards a more naturalistic style of garden making. The highly structured flower borders of twentieth century European gardens have steadily given way to a looser, more informal planting style where complex mixtures of perennials are planted in wide open drifts in …
Contemporary Perennial Planting – concepts and practice Read More »
Perennials are by their very nature loose and informal especially when combined into contemporary naturalistic planting schemes. The traditional herbaceous border was created as a tableaux to be viewed from outside and was given structure by being given a framework of formal hedges and fronted with neatly mown lawn. Perennial meadows as an example of …
Four years ago I created a series of demonstration borders for Lianne’s Siergrassen; a specialised ornamental grass nursery in the north of the Netherlands. This was one of the “Perennial Meadow” schemes two week ago (mid-July 2012). Four summers on, and the scheme has evolved and developed, in some ways how I had planned and …
It is now three years since I planted nine separate perennial meadows to illustrate my eBooks and they are looking fantastic. In fact they looked good in the first year, but now we can begin to see just how successful they are going to be in the long term. I have twenty five years of …
Success with Perennials – Establishment and Maintenance of Planting Schemes Read More »
Well actually, yes, but it all depends on what we mean by an ephemeral perennial. Ephemeral things (from the Greek, ephemeros – literally, lasting only one day) exist only briefly, such plants may be short lived or flower only briefly. When we first become interested in gardening and start trawling books for inspiration long lists …
There is a lot more to the idea of a perennial meadow than simply the random arrangement of a group of compatible plants to create a matrix of vegetation to replace an old lawn. In the series of posts – Meadows 101 – I have explained the concepts and practical steps to take in creating …
This will be the penultimate post in the Meadows 101 section of this site, but in many ways it is one of the most important. This series of posts aims to give an introduction to the ideas and practices of creating naturalistic perennial meadows in modest sized garden landscapes. I hope to inspire others to …