It’s slowly coming together in the front garden.
We’ve made one change in our plan. Or another, is perhaps the more honest description. We said we’d plant annuals in the ‘hedge-lines’ this year, to be replaced by boxwood next season. But we had a change of heart. And now there’s a hedge of Lavender (L. angustifolia) planted.
The boxwood planned for these hedges will be coming along regardless within these next few years, we’re growing our own from cuttings. So if we find that the lavender doesn’t work out to our liking we’ll change back. If not, we’ve got an idea or two regarding what to do with the boxwood instead
There are a few reasons why we changed our mind and decided to give lavender a go:
- Once the raised beds were placed in the garden they we’re so square, so ‘formal’, that the thought of a hedge with a softer look than boxwood was appealing.
- The garden is designed as a walkthrough garden, and scents were always important, the lavender fits the theme.
- Lavender will be of higher benefit to insects than boxwood.
We’ll see how it does. The soil (which is clay-based) was prepped with sand and gravel before planting. There is one section of the hedge which might be a tiny bit too shady given lavenders appetite for sun, time will tell. It remains to be seen if we’ll miss the boxwood in wintertime – when the cut back lavender will look scruffy in comparison.
Apart from the hedge we’ve also planted two of the beds with the following perennials:
The beds in question will also have a rose each down the line – simply because we have successful cuttings of a wonderful yellow-peach rose that needs a place to live. Since this new garden was planned in purple and yellow we decided that three of the cuttings will be introduced in the new garden – two in raised beds another – well, somewhere. They need to grow somewhat larger first though, we’ll if they’ll be big enough by the end of summer, or if they’ll move in next year.
Next step now is to make sure the soil in the remaining raised beds are good enough for vegetables. And fixing up the three existing flowerbeds.
The Garden Bubble Blog 
A thought on box: the most common comment on box these days refers to the problems with box blight and maintaining a box hedge has become a chore rather than the ease with which it was grown only ten years ago. A small-leaved euonymous might give the same effect as box is you wished to have that formal hedging.
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Ah, thanks for the tip! We’ve thought about a number of different versions of the hedging – but not euonymous. We will check it out if it turns out we’re not happy with the current version. Which of course may be the case – we’re fickle :-).
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