Enough is enough so a change of plan!!

Outside my cottage is a strip of land which is mine, I have dug out all the weeds turned all the soil over and was planning to make a front rose bed. This continuous bad weather though has changed my mind, I am just going to turn it into a grass verge with border plants at the front. Anyone know any particularly pretty border plants? and has the weather made anyone else seriously rethink their plans!!

Val

 

Val, I can sympathise with your thinking. I too have been led into a false sense of security and the memories of recent devastating winds have been shelved to the back of my mind as things have been calm lately. But today has been a wake up call ! I've been continually planting since early spring and the garden resembles something like a garden and not just a green square surrounded by hedging. At the moment I'm looking out at the garden at all the planting which is practically laying horizontal in the wind ! The first casualty is a rose which has a budding branch snapped off. There will be no petals left on my oriental poppies and cosmos as they are getting blown to bits !
Now, I know it could be worse and I could be looking at structural damage e.t.c. but it is disheartening after all my time and effort after work plus I dread to think how much money I have spent over the past few months. Blimey !
Hope everyone is okay further south where things look a lot worse.
gazania

 

Same here..foxglove and cosmos have taken a whipping not checked everything yet im waiting for a break in the rain
what about a cottage wildflower patch gemini(might be a bit late this yr) cheap,pretty n low maintenance

 

Luckily, my garden is quite sheltered so I've escaped the worst of the wind. Even so, I have had to re-tie up my mangetout peas after their supports were blown over, and a couple of foxgloves were felled like trees so they are currently in a vase indoors with a froth of red valerian and lamium around them - very nice too. Might be called turning adversity into advantage

The answer to border plants for windy sites would probably not include anything tall like the aforementioned foxgloves or delphiniums, although lupins might get away with it. It would probably be better to go for clumpy things like hardy geraniums, centranthus, salvias, geums ummmm I'm sure there'll be more suggestions soon.