Idea's Please?

fionny

Hi Folks,

We have a raised bed south facing in front of our house... we need to plant it up and would like some advice... ideally we'd like some bit of colour all year round and would maybe incorporate a small water feature too..

Here is a rough plan of it:



And some pics:










We would appriciate any and all advice as to what to plant and where.

Thanks for looking too!

looksee

Are you looking for something low maintenance - shrubs and weed suppressant? or a cottage garden kind of look with lots of herbaceous flowering plants? or annual bedding plants, or plants and pebbles? The last three would require some ongoing maintenance - well even the shrubs will need some attention. And a water feature is an over rated item, mainly because you have to remember to turn it on occasionally! But it also needs attention, water topping up, keeping clean etc.

While you are thinking about it you could dig it over and add some new soil, what is there is very poor quality and lots of stones. It looks as though it may have some old weed membrane there that has had stone chippings on it. The lawn near to the bed also looks as though it would be improved by being dug and better soil added.

macraignil

You would need to decide how high you want the plants to grow in the raised bed. Is there a limit to the height of your planting? It's usually best to have lower growing plants to the edges so they are not hidden behind the bigger ones.

For year round colour I would recommend photinia red robin, pieris forrest flame, hebe and pittosporum silver queen. Erysimum bowles mauve and fuchsia might also be worth considering.

prinzeugen

A few flower carpet roses and perenial Geraniums would look great there. Just plant and leave them.

You could add a few other bits so you have the colour during the winter.

fionny

Thanks all for the suggestions! Mucho appriciated!

We are in the process of digging it all up now and de-rooting and removing the stones and weeds... the earth under seems pretty good once turned and will top this up with some compost and farmyard manure that was recommended to us.

We went to a garden centre that gave great advice also and decided to go with a green Acer in the corner with some Silver Sword Azeleas and another flower I cannot name underneath it:




The in the middle of the curve we have 3 Box Buxus which will be surrounded by Nepeta "Purple Haze"



In the other 2 corners then we have Grasses and Hebe's:


Hopefully it will all look good when done.

EDIT: Image links not working but shared album here is anyone is interested: https://goo.gl/photos/jzX5nEJ9DXMS8YHQ8

fionny

For those interested this is the nearly finished job, we are going to fill majority in with bark mulch, we will be doing the wall around it in the near future:

Google Photos Gallery Link