A GARDEN IN PROGRESS - Part four

The slide through autumn and the first frosty mornings of the year have been a very new experience for me and my garden.

The beds closest to the house which were extended into the lawn and planted in early autumn 2022 have revealed their softening decline for the first time and it has been both rewarding and left me with a few question marks.

To avoid completely recapping how this piece of garden has transformed and responded to the seasons in its first 12 months - you can find clear links to the previous features at the bottom of this article.

I will pick up where I left off with the last update, sharing a few catch-up images below just as the planting is coming off the boil in late summer. The Verbena bonariensis, despite my complete undying love for it, really had started to get a serious lean on. The smothering of its neighbours was only second to the intense vigorous reach of the gaura. But, I did find that viewing the beds from the house ‘hid’ the preciously leaning and the ongoing generous flowering of both of these plants deep into autumn really meant I couldn’t hold their faults against them. There is always a double edge to the sword!

ABOVE AND BELOW: The beds approaching a year old in late Feb 2023.
Not including the raised bed in the lawn which is four years old now.

This was the first summer season of these beds - many tweaks are to be made in terms of plant positions.
Main plants seen here are the white dots of *Oenothera lindheimeri* (gaura), tall arms of Verbena bonariensis (Purpletop vervain), little crimson dots of *Knautia macedonica*, some leaning heads of echinacea, the lemon yellow of *Coreopsis verticillata* ‘Moonbeam’. The taller grass is Miscanthus sinensis ‘Morning Light’ and the lower is *Pennisetum villosum.*

*Rudbeckia deamii* *in the central raised bed.*

*My little dwarf apple tree* *‘Blush Babe’* *had a brilliant year - despite living in a wine barrel!*

*View from the sofa in late April.* *The frothy fans of Miscanthus sinensis now open and beautiful.*

As always in New Zealand, the press announces that autumn is here on the first of March, but Mother Nature is much kinder and it was a pleasant slow down this year, gradually revealing itself with warm shortening days and the sun finding its lazier track past the house. It’s not until the sun sets across the top of the studio porch that I really register we are now ‘there’.

NOTABLE SUCCESSES

Without a doubt, my first autumn with flowering exotic grasses in my planting has been a very rewarding one. They injected an entirely new textural and tonal essence in satisfying contrast to the green and colourful state of the garden in spring and summer. Achieving my hopeful goal of a rich but diverse difference in the show between seasons.
The fans of miscanthus drew the eye away from the exhausted perennials that have progressively looked less artfully wild and just more…exhausted. In a way they supported the decline of these plants, making the beds look purposeful as opposed to ‘done’ as they might have looked without them.
In saying this, some of the perennials rose above others in the visual value presented by their skeletal state. Particularly the echinacea, sanguisorba, the dotty heads of rudbeckia and the unexpected stand out of the coreopsis which presents now as an almost black textural mound.
As I was reminded the other day on instagram, brown is also a colour (as championed by Piet Oudolf).
As I progress in banking all this knowledge, rather than entirely hands off, I might selectively cut back some of the perennials at this time of year and let the other architectural forms shine as best as I can.

In addition to the miscanthus I also have a couple of treasured Calamagrostis brachytricha and a Penesetum villosum which were given to me by my mentor Jill Simpson of Fishermans Bay. For now, these are pretty scarce to find in NZ and I will be carefully dividing them to increase my stock.

I felt that the gaura, Verbena bonariensis and the miscanthus played extremely nicely together and they really took the torch in autumn, however, special mention must be given to the Penstemon ‘Garnet’ which has simply continued with its seasonal amnesia by budding up and popping jewel-toned spires left, right and centre. My plan is to force them to bed before August but I will most definitely be dividing and giving them greater preference in the balance of my planting going forward.

The other real success in my book has been the instant resilience of nearly all the plants I have used. I watered these beds about a quarter of the volume that I would have in previous years with the same conditions, and they responded gracefully by really hanging in there, particularly in the dry period we had in Canterbury in late January. This has been an exciting experiment in itself and I’m firmly on the wagon of treating them (a little) mean to keep them keen.

*A new and lovely combination that revealed itself this autumn - miscanthus, Verbena bonariensis and gaura.*

*Magical autumn light - easily a competitor for summer light.*

*My niece Ada in the garden in late April.* *If anything the gaura found a crescendo in May and only started to lose its petals once the winds came.*

*The raised bed on the lawn looked texturally brilliant for a moment but think the clean-up is now required.* *I really enjoyed the skeletal frames of the* *Sanguisorba officinalis* *vs the echinacea. I plan on adding some more grasses to this bed for next year.*

REFLECTIONS AND LOOKING FORWARD

To be honest, I have hardly gardened this year.
I spent four intense months on the final stages of my new book A Guided Discovery of Gardening (due out this spring!), and then, during the traditional ‘tidy up’ time I was working solidly on creating and launching Unearthed.

While I have groaned at my lack of attention and the serious infestation of clover I now have under the cherry tree - this (unintentional) hands-off approach has REALLY allowed me to see how all these plants react and move through this next stage in their cycle.
And I have learned a lot. (And clover is a cover crop anyway right?)

In my first article of this series following the new planting as it went into the ground, I was so worried that I hadn’t planted close enough.
Well - I have.

My spacing was always based on inexperienced guestimations due to not being entirely familiar with planting a new bed from scratch, but ultimately my echinacea and salvias got completely bullied into submission. The main culprit gaura is both the bright shining star and a problem of this space. I want to give room to the mentioned favourites to allow stronger swathes of colour and form through the frothy beds, but she is also by far the longest flowering, most beautiful plant in the whole garden. By reducing the gaura in the beds, am I losing the soft romance that I have enjoyed so much, particularly into autumn?
The jury is out on what I’ll do about this conundrum. Maybe it is a case of not being able to have it all, and that more of few plants is the pathway to atmosphere and magic anyway.

I have also learnt, that even though I cut down all the trees on that fence line, of course, the fence still throws shade during the height of the day (I have suffered through this lesson over and over) and I haven’t quite nailed the best plants to be tucked up against it. These need to be tall, tough and ok with part shade - something I tried with the VB but it still leant forward toward the sun.

*My niece examining a nigella seed pod.*

*Mixed and muted texture - a new and welcome kind of ramble and chaos compared to the summer show.*

“My spacing was always based on inexperienced guestimations due to not being entirely familiar with planting a new bed from scratch, but ultimately my echinacea and salvias got completely bullied into submission. The main culprit gaura is both the bright shining star and a problem of this space.”

— Julia

*Penstemon ‘Garnet’ STILL giving life and colour.*

My updates for you going forward will be monthly, and I will be throwing a wider net beyond these new beds.
Right now, as I sit in a cold Christchurch June, I think about the half-started major changes at the front of the house that include ‘camped out’ sections of box hedging that I hope to shape and unplanted grasses and trees. Also masses of bare earth with no mulch which is just asking for trouble.

Having to catch up with you in July will force me to get on with this project!

Ju xo