Spring of 2015 was hot and dry, not the best conditions for our new plants, and the early weeks were a race to weed and then get the mulch down before the weeds started again. The mulch, however, has proved a worthwhile investment, making it possible to work on the beds even in wet weather without sinking into the clay soil which adheres so well to our boots. The bunnies took their toll as well, digging more than nibbling, asserting their ancestral rights to the area we had chosen to turn into a garden. Peter invested in ultrasonic scarers, but they didn’t seem bothered!

The verbascum flowered first, in early May.

By June it was beginning to look like a garden.

Helenium and salvia nemerosa provided brilliant colour

and gaura and hemerocallis came into flower.

Achillea, asters and perovskia were flowering in July, along with a blaze of purple salvias,

by August we had monarda, echinacea and helianthus,

and the grasses were coming into their own.

By September the helianthus which had been an inch or so high in April were towering above my head and the asters were a blaze of colour. Hard to believe in so much growth in so short a time!

Not everything made it, of course. Bunnies apart, some of the plants we had chosen were probably not best suited to the conditions. The phlox barely grew, and although coreopsis has done well in some places has not survived in others. Most of the grasses did well, save the molinia, moor grass may do better on moors! In September I took an inventory of the gaps with a view to re-planting later in the year.

One concern however was resolved when our neighbour appeared bearing a pot of honey from his beehives. My anxieties about disrupting the local eco-system to the detriment of his bees were clearly groundless, they had profited from the experience, as we doubtless had from their efforts at pollination.