In need of some ideas to cover a low sloping wall

Hi - we have recently had a lot of building work done and a new garden retaining wall built. I need some ideas on what to do in a corner of the garden. The corner is north facing and is on the west side of the garden, so it gets a good amount of light in the morning but very little in the winter.

The corner slopes away quite quickly to the fence, which is my neighbours (yes it's sat on the ground so likely to rot). I'd like some ideas on:

1. What I can grow next to the call to cover it all year round. I was thinking of a box hedge but wan't sure if behind the wall would get quite wet

2. What I could grow in the corner, which would be suitable and colourful given the limitation of light. I have had some success with Weigela, Forsythia and Iris in the past. I prefer shrubs and don't mind work to prune / cut back in the Autumn.

Thanks, Nick

 

Ferns would be good you could get lots of different textures and different colours

Or heucheras for colour or astibles

I dont know any shrubs that would suit that as i have the opposite

 

That's a nicely shaped flower bed

I agree with @Dips and think the ferns are a great idea. The big leaves overhanging the wall would break up the straight edges nicely. I quite like Creeping Jenny spilling over walls if you had any pots/troughs you wanted to put on top of the wall.

I'm not sure how wet it would get against that wall but my parents have a box hedge growing at the base of a 4' wall and it has no problems at all.

The wall is grey and I love light green and grey together. You could try Chimonobambusa which is a bamboo. They get pretty big and could take over that flower bed but they can be pruned every couple of years to keep them tamed. They would look nice in the corner but don't produce much in the way of colour.... more of a backdrop.

A plant with colour is obviously the hydrangea. Again, pruned each year it will fit in that corner and you get tonnes of colour over summer! It looks pretty cool in autumn when the flower heads die and turn to dusty brown pom poms.

Cottoneaster would be my choice as a backdrop with colour and I would get it growing along the back fence. The red berries look great and there's no need to prune it! Just keep threading and weaving the new shoots back through the rest of the plant/fence.

 

Many thanks for your helpful comments

 

I'm currently on a massive lavender and box binge... maybe some pyramids and some bushed lavender around the extremities of the border which should hide the wall quite well?

 

Nice photoshopping Prkns

 

Looks like a good plan to me :-)