Garden Diaries with Diana Yates: Potager, Borders, Theatre

The differences between here and in the kitchen gardens I did want this to be more formal um and I decided here because it's the same gradient I decided here to actually level the beds and we bought some um bare root box hedging and it's taken a while to get established because there is a wind pocket here yeah but we planted hedging along the back here to hopefully sort of counter that but they're really sort of taking root now and really filling out so just keeping on top of feeding and stuff is really important just now but here I just wanted to mix the ornamental with the practical um so we have asparagus and potatoes so the outer beds are sort of my crops that I can just pick and cut things like that I've got cosmos here and over there I've got some cauliflowers and leeks and then in the center um I haven't planted for like my sort of forever beds if you like I'm just trying out what works because I just want to see what happens with this wind um so we had a really good year with alliums and um we've got sort of the drumstick alliums coming through now which is sort of a later summer first year I had snapdragons and sunflowers and just all the color it was properly a cut flower garden for that year um now I'm moving more towards a softer palette I love lilac and purple and white I love those softer tones and pinks and sort of smoky colors yes like this as well um but I also like to just add just random things as it goes so we've got chives that I really should cut back but I'd like them yeah it's the additional structure the texture as well that it brings and then we have Japanese anemones for sort of you know flowers more towards the autumn actually the one thing is anemones in this garden everything else seems to just you know multiply I wish they would multiply I love them I love the sort of tall spiky structure that they have but time will tell if they just need a couple of years to establish um but yeah I think once I think it's got that sort of wind break that the kitchen garden has I'd be more inclined to just go more with specimens I just really want to live there permanently yeah we've filled in kind of this area as we go and we've kind of left a tier at the back yeah for sort of a sort of higher tier of planting and the irises I want to pull forward okay and there was a lupine right at the back when I moved in and you know they've got a really long tap root um so to move that'll be quite tricky but I'm just gonna see what happens as time goes on if I want to leave it there or yeah and you've got time to kind of like ponder that yeah you could see all the rest of summer and wait for that for an autumn and I love the repetition and I love the hydrangeas coming through and hear the alchemilla I love this lime color and I think it picks up really nicely against the um these like purple heads here these purple blooms and flowers and they're so stunning yeah absolutely and again just going along back here is so stunning and I'm seeing a lot of really healthy foliage so for a lot of people that worry about slugs and things like that when a healthy garden will have slugs so no not really um I think I think there's a balance in in this garden I'm hoping we we keep and we can maintain um but we feed the birds constantly and there is a really large bird populations garden now which I'm so thankful for um and I think they like especially the song they generally hop around and tackle your slugs and snails and and for these borders do you put a top dressing on or anything like that or do you kind of leave them be do you dig through or no dig we're not no dig but we're not fully dig either I think people have to do what works for their garden space I mean if you're gardening on completely clay soil no dig isn't gonna work for you um but in new areas we're trying to establish new beds I will try the no dig method cardboard and molten just seeing how I can get that to break down um in this spot um the soil is very different to what it is in other areas of the garden as you move through our garden we've got clay in some areas of the sand in some areas and then we've got lovely loamy soil and others and this is more loamy we have a lot of stones and where they just constantly seem to be coming to the surface of the erosion and but we sort of top dress once every two years um and we do everywhere yeah and I like to also do a summer mulch I haven't done the spot yet but I'll use um the kelpie compost and I'll mulch around all of the plants especially those younger ones that just need that real boost to get them going and it just it works wonder yeah and the kelpie will have that seed that'll really help feed as well just to kind of get them just keep all those nutrients in the soil and just help kind of keep that soil structure really nice and healthy and my top dressing as well is kind of letting the garden do its thing without interfering too much but I also think um if you're creating really strong plants they fend for themselves a lot better against thugs and snails and things like that so and I'm just trying to lean into the fact that this garden is great at self-seeding and it's great it gives me free plants so instead of just trying to fill everything in one go I'm trying to be patient and get used to the gaps and be fine with it and use the things that self-seed like the verbascoms here yeah to fill in where I'm not ready to plant yet yeah um and I'm actually really enjoying that yeah letting that structure evolve yeah as well as you know because it's going to be different and then from what where it is now and then in three years time you know seeing how all the shrubs and then subshrubs things are how they can grow and establish themselves and kind of what shape they take yeah um within the border will alter things so having that ability to have the self-seeders then gives you a lot of opportunity yeah and if you make mistakes as well and things just don't look cohesive a whole drift of self-seeded plants can just make pull things together yeah so um yeah that continuity yeah yeah kind of wave so this was an overgrown rockery okay and we just couldn't keep on top of it it was it was quite um it was full of grass um there was sort of random planting and we just decided that we wanted something a little bit smarter yeah and again all of these stones were from around our property and my husband um he's like oh he loves hard landscape so he created these things reusing recycling using what's already here and I think that's brilliant and I love that because this will um you can always be changing it around yeah yeah I love that that it's not permanent um but I do have perennials and pots but there is an um and just annual so like I've got an amnesia scented vanilla variety and I absolutely love that in the kitchen garden as well that scent of vanilla and I'll just change the annuals off if I want to bring in a different sort of color to it um yeah I really so you can find numerous displays and you've got lots of room as well for to keep adding to it yes I think it looks absolutely beautiful it's stunning and I'm pretty sure the sheep agrees as well right he's enjoying it yeah so by having yeah again I just think it looks brilliant and I love the tiering as well because then you just get this evolution and we don't have to worry so much about planting um to certain heights and things like that because it does have those tiers exactly you can put smaller specimens at the top and they can still be seen and they can still flourish exactly it's just easier to work with as well because before we were sort of scrambling up the rockery and now it's steps and it's all kind of sort of leveled out as much as we wanted it to and what's really nice is um the stones are now taking on that moss and alpines that obviously were here have actually started to self-seed in between you can see the birds hopping around in between um and it's just it makes it more natural it looks like it's been there for a really long time landscape and you can see that the evolution of it already in a short period of time essentially in a couple of years it's already starting to create its own part of the bigger ecosystem and especially like you said before by purposefully planting the bird feeder here hello mr robin hello oh it's just wonderful and it all works together yeah it's bad