Help & advice needed please

I haven't been on this forum since last year - you gave me such good advice then, everything went well in the front garden. Now I want to start round the back --
I want to develop the top of the garden into a nice shrub or flower bed with lots of colour, and maybe some rockery type plants dotted in.
I live at 1000ft on open moorland with west winds and coolish temps but quite dry.
The soil tends to be crumbly and dry but I have added chicken manure and fertiliser to it.
It backs onto a field with sheep and cows in at various times, so no poisonous plants.
Could anybody overcome all these obstacles and find me half a doz nice colourful things to shove in there? Perennials because my frost-free date is 1st June and I cant wait that long lol

 

Is it possible to have a picture of the bed in question please Fumanchu?

 

Our camera has no batteries and we are crumblies with dinosaur mobiles :(
But it's not a big space at all, its just the end strip of the back garden after the lawn. Husband says it's around 6ft deep front to back fence, and maybe 15ft wide.
The other half is given over to tatties, and I'm left with this bit to fill.

 

It's bit of a tall order considering your situation and the issues with the farm animals. I'm assuming they put their heads over your fence to graze what's in your garden. Is there anyway you can prevent this? A very high percentage of plants are poisonous and it's going to be nigh on impossible to fill the bed with non-poisonous plants that will serve your climate too.

 

Yes, I couldn't think of anything that's why I asked you lot lol
The lambs come into the garden and the coos just lean over the fence and chomp. I did want to slab it and put chairs up there as there is a nice view, but we are too decrepit to do it plus this is a terraced row of cottages and all the materials would need to be hauled from the street out front, right through the house and out the back. I thought it was too much hassle.
Is there anything non-poisonous that they just don't like?
Or I suppose I could put up trellis or something like that, tbut I don't want to spoil my view. I have thought about a rockery, I suppose that would be the only thing the s*ds wouldn't reach.

 

What about going for some lovely native flowers? Primroses are tough enough, and nowadays you can cultivars in all manner of bright colours. Miniature dafts, hardy geraniums, some of the alliums like chives or wild garlic? Foxgloves thrive in the peak district I've noticed, so they can take the altitude and cutting winds.

 

Clueless, if the lambs come into the garden, daffs and Foxgloves are a non-starter as they are very poisonous as you probably know.

Here is a list of toxic plants to avoid that may help you Fumanchu.
http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/poisonous-plants-a-summary.767/

 

But would they eat them? Both grow wild on moorland, and yet all the sheep still seem to be there. There are some plants that are poisonous that animals unfortunately don't know not to eat, but I don't think daffs and foxgloves are among them.

I missed the point about lambs coming in, but that pretty much means that all plants are out, except for the ones that animals instinctively (or through scent or taste) know not to eat.

 

Perhaps a herb garden then? But the animals would probably strip that anyway! The only other way I can think of round the problem is to grass the area over near to the fence and dig a bed further away, then find a way of keeping the lambs out.

 

I've never seen anything eating daffs so they would ok, but I don't really like them.
So far up in that bit I've had tatties one year and onions one year and nothing touched them, but I'd like some colour to brighten the place up.
The lambs don't come in too often, we stopped them getting in our bit but now they get in through next door's garden. The coos are the biggest pain.
I suggested grassing it Sheal but the husband says it's a different height to the lawn and will look daft. But then he's probly saying that because he knows who will need to dig it over and prepare it!
Thank you for the poisonous plant list, that's very helpful.
What about the coloured grasses? I could very much live with some black or blue grass - and get the wee bags of white gravel, we could manage them. Would coos eat them?

 

Also just had the idea of wild rose hedging... that would maybe do!? And what about Broom?

 

Broom is lovely, and there are cultivars in all sorts of bright shades from yellow through to red. If its not on the poisonous plants list though, it should be.

There is some interesting folklore and scholarly theories about broom, but I won't disclose it publicly in case any reader is daft enough to test the theories.

 

How about Rosa Rugosa? That isn't poisonous and flowers through summer into autumn when the rose hips take over. It's also pretty hardy and is not fussy about soil.

 

EEK will leave Broom, and yes I had already thought maybe wild rose in a hedge, if I can keep it in check and tidy. TY!

 

I wouldn't be too worried about toxic plants. A couple of the biggest threats to grazing animals would be couch grass, which just blends in with other grasses so the grazing animals just eat it by accident, and ragwort, which grows everywhere in the wild. Most animals know not to eat it, but if its in the grass, they sometimes do by accident. Bracken is also poisonous (a debatable point, as young bracken is considered a food item in Japan, where they have one of the highest rates of certain types of cancer). Again, most animals know not to eat it. The list goes on. You can't possibly eliminate poisonous plants from your garden, and you have even less chance of keeping out of the surrounding area.

I'd only be worried about the very, very toxic stuff if small kids that are still at the 'taste test everything' stage are playing out there.

One of the more common garden weeds, euphorbia, will give some people (and presumably animals too) very nasty skin burns if exposed to the milky sap that leaks out of the plant when its damaged.