Hoeing & Mowing

 

 

HAVE YOU GOT YOUR DUCKS IN A ROW?? 

 

We’re keeping a lid on things here but it’s a bit of a mission between the weeds, weather fluctuations and ramshackle fencing. 

It all needs maintaining though as the key to keeping your garden looking as though it’s all togged up in its Sunday spats every day of the week is to keep it tidy. 
 

   

Provided the edges are neat, the grass is mown and everything’s deadheaded, you’re good to go. 

 

 

A TV gardener once advised not to work against nature.  Except that you kind of are; this is pretty much exactly what you’re endeavouring to do. 

This advice entirely defeats the object, if the object be to produce a chocolate box cottage style garden or a more formal planting arrangement like you’d expect to see on a day out at a stately home or garden attraction.  As nature doesn’t specifically set everything out in nice neat formal rows with pretty ditsy things bobbing and trailing from pots and hanging baskets. 

 

Nature steps straight up with the big guns, gigantic great stalking weeds with leaves as big as umbrellas which look as though they’d obliterate all other life forms.  Left to its own inclinations it will spread and sprawl around, the prolific plants invading and eliminating the softer and weaker types in this madly competitive frenzy.  If you allowed nature to architect your planting style you’d have knotweed, hogweed, bindweed and brambles all entangled and competing as far as the eye could see. 

 

No; TV gardener.  I think we very much need to work at variance with nature.

 

 

So keeping it tidy is the key to achieving maximum satisfaction. 

Though this one might be over egging it a tad, interspersing geraniums with plastic topiary – not leaving anything to chance here. (twerps) 

 

 

 

 

The more you learn about plants the keener you become to develop your knowledge, experiment with different varieties and start collecting.  But, unless you have unlimited space you could end up over-stocking.  We made the mistake of overplanting at our last house.  We had a small area of approx. 15m² overplanted with:

 

Ceanothus

Weigela

Pyracantha

Cornus

Lilac

Hebe

Chaenomeles

Hardy Fuschia

Hibiscus

Verbena Bonariensis

 

Shall I go on?? 

 

OK:

 

Jasmine

Passiflora

Climbing roses

Kerria japonica

Viburnum

Eryngium

Euphorbia

Clematis

Phygelius

Caryopteris

Crocosmia

Hemerocallis

 

Yes, it was a problem requiring hours every weekend between May-September just to prune it back and keep it under control.  Instead of relaxing and enjoying the garden half of every weekend was lost in pruning and lopping, trying to regain some appearance of order.  You’ll then find, as it’s so difficult to infiltrate the general melee, that other low growing things are encroaching from below and gradually taking over underneath. 

 

Then came the bramble invasion.  They were sending runners underground and sprouting up pretty much everywhere. 

In less accessible places they were growing strongly upwards on thick branches and becoming matted and entangled with the established shrubs and rampaging into the neighbouring gardens. 

We hacked them, throttled them and poisoned the roots but all to no avail.  It was a mystery as to how they appeared because this wasn’t a problem for the first ten years, then suddenly they were there and out of control ever after.  Hence why we are sticking to annual and low growing manageable perennials here at the USG-Plot.

 

 

Check out garden competition winners.  Whatever their style, be it tropical or a formal knot garden you’ll see one prevailing feature, everything’s manicured to within an inch of its life.  It's all been meticulously planned, prepared and maintained with military-like precision.  No weed would dare venture in and the plants are all verdant, robust and razzle dazzle cat's pyjamas. 

 

I know there’s a slide away from this toward informal meadow style planting, which is preferable to some and lightens the workload but this ain’t what gets your visitors gazing round with their tongues lolling out.

 

 

 

It’s a good idea to have everything, but everything, planted, tidied, swept, mown and deadheaded in time for Wimbledon so you can snuggle in to watch the tennis and only have to peel yourself away for the most urgent of watering, mowing or chopping some mint to lightly refresh your Pimms.