Year three in September: what finally works and the three I am giving up on
The Sunday photographs from this summer, lined up on the kitchen table, show a border that for the first time looks intended. There is a rhythm along it: the same dark purple salvia spikes appear at roughly two-metre intervals, the tufted hair grass catches the evening light in three places rather than one, and the big pale pink astrantia has knitted into a drift at the shady end instead of sulking as single plants. That rhythm is the result of year two’s great shuffle, and it is the single most important thing I have learned: one of anything looks like a mistake, three looks like a decision, five looks like a garden.
What works, by the photographs and not by my fondness. The salvias flowered from late May, were cut back hard in July and flowered again from mid-August; they are still going. The hardy geraniums at the front have been in flower or in good leaf since April. The astrantia, the tufted hair grass, the Japanese anemones that have just started, and the sedums now colouring up along the sunny front edge. The alchemilla, which I nearly removed in year one for flopping, has become the thing that ties the front together. All of these have been divided at least once and all of them wanted it.
What I am giving up on, with some sadness.
- Echinacea. Planted five in 2024, three in 2025, and this spring two came back. The clay is too wet in winter for them and no amount of grit at planting has changed that.
- Delphiniums. Glorious for ten days in June, flat on the path after the first July rain, and the slugs eat the spring shoots to nothing in a wet year.
- The white phlox, which has had mildew by August all three summers and spends September looking grey.
Their spaces go to more of what has proven itself: another five salvias, three more anemones for the back, and a repeat of the grasses. That feels unadventurous and I have decided that unadventurous is what a border this size needs. The experimenting can happen in pots.
The gaps I still see: late April, between the bulbs finishing and the geraniums starting, and the far north end in July, where the shed shade keeps everything a fortnight behind. Both go on the list for the autumn planting, with the photographs as evidence.