After a fair amount of time spent moping or doing very little I’ve finally spent a day hacking back the dead stems, scratching out the moss and prising out the couch grass ‘onions’. It’s satisfying to see some semblance of order returning to parts of the most overgrown places – and more importantly, the re-opening up of borders which had felt (although I hadn’t paid enough attention and realised until now), somewhat claustrophobic.
I’m planning on an overhaul of my borders. I’ve finally got to the happy point where I can start to dig out and discard. Previously I was just glad that stuff was growing and filling the gaps – even if that meant having plants that I didn’t overly like but was pleased that they grew! Now I’ve a substantial list of plants that I can move elsewhere (even perhaps out of the garden into the ditches and hedgerows) and, more importantly, other (better) things I’ve raised from seed or cuttings that now need to be moved from their nursery beds into a more permanent home.
What I’m not good at is ‘imagining’ what things will look like. I can’t plan plantings or juxtapositions of plants. It’s always been a bit of pot luck and serendipity if things have worked – normally I have no space ready for a new plant so things get fitted in and then worked around….even if they’re not ‘working’.