Annual seeds to update a border

The Dumping Ground

The new Viburnum Tinus trees and shrubs are arriving late April so for the moment I have stopped digging over the back border and will weed it as and when needed. In the meantime I have been pottering about and catching up with some jobs I have been putting off for a long time.


There is a small border next to our back door, for ages it had a wooden planter on it that we borough from our old house. It had been put by the backdoor as it contained herbs but over time it started to fall apart and the area was looking rather like a dumping ground.









Spring continued this sad look, with two very pathetic looking Hyacinth and some old daffodils that did not flower. You can imagine this is not how I was picturing this border would look. It is also home to an early flowering clematis on the wall above. The clematis is beautiful and provides wonderful flowers in early spring but it is full of dead wood and looks rather messy with all the wood hanging down. I decided that it was about time I did something.

Sad looking plants

Being an excellent destructive gardener I pulled up all the plants and weeds. Now all proper gardeners you may want to stop reading or take a deep breath as I then attacked the clematis. I found the really dead parts and cut them back to where I could see a new bud forming. I was very careful not to cut any that had obvious new growth. This took some time as for once I was actually thinking about what I was doing, I do not want to kill it just tidy it up a little. A lot of the deadwood just fell out and we will look carefully at this plant when it stops flowering late spring time as it needs to be retrained (if that is a word). I also found the RHS guide to pruning this type of Clematis which I will be reading.

RHS Guide to Pruning Clematis

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Lovely woody Clematis

Looks beautiful around the back door

Then the boys and I decided to plant some summer annuals, we had some border sunflower seeds from Thompson and Morgan that the boys had won for a picture they had drawn and some other mixed seeds. We scattered them and watered them in and we shall see what happens in the summer. The boys are continuing to water them as its very dry at the moment. I am hoping these seeds will provide an inexpensive way to have a summer border.

Area all smart and tidy

Our lovely border sunflowers