Why I like herbaceous.

In early 2014 I tackled a hellish part of the garden which was a complete mess. It took ages to get rid of all the offending rubbish and then I started to barrow onto the area tonnes of so so topsoil/subsoil plus more tonnes of old broken slabs which had been removed from another area to make way for my new greenhouse.
Throughout the 2014 season I sorted the levels of soil. Added as much grass clippings,compost etc I could lay my hands on and re-laid the crazy paving. Don't really like crazy paving but have it all over the place and would be a hideously expensive project to change it. It is the snag of having a huge garden, all projects take on gargantuan proportions!
Photos are of what it looked like cleared but before I had levelled the border or laid the path.






At the beginning of April 2015 I started to split up my Spring flowering herbaceous plants and plant chunks (hope you like the technical terminology!) in the new bed.
The next 2 photos are of what it looks like today. While it may not be remotely a la Chelsea esk!! the good old herbaceous have made the bed look as tho it has been there for quite a while and apart from having to buy a few bags of cement and sand the whole project cost me ZERO. I couldn't even begin to imagine how much it would have cost to buy enough plants to cover approx 120 x 5 ft border.
Obviously I had to have a lot of herbaceous plants to split up but hope this project might show how you don't need to have to spend a fortune on gardens. The vast majority of my plants have been sourced over the years from friends, open garden stalls ...a la the likes of @shiney and his wonderful event, growing from seed which costs very little and doing swaps of plants.
This bed is purely Spring flowering and foliage plants . I now have made space in other borders for them to be summer flowering. This is my LAST large project as I am getting far far too to tackle things of this size again!

 

That looks lovely and is a real inspiration.
I'm trying to do things on a tight budget and this just goes to show what can be achieved.
Thanks for sharing.

 

Thanks for the very nice comments. While not a patch on Shineyland it will do the job, the soil isn't the best but luckily many herbaceous seem to cope planted in fairly rubbish stuff. Now I have a few gaps I might treat myself to some new summer flowering herbaceous to ring the changes

 

What a lovely spot you have made that. I'm also not usually a fan of crazy paving either (I also have some) but you have done a really good job of that so it looks like it should be there.
Gosh. What part of the country do you live in? Obviously a pretty one.
Please keep us updated with photos, it would be really nice to see how that space looks through the seasons.
Hard work well worth it, lucky you, do enjoy it.

GG

 

Wow! The change is almost unbelievable. I actually had to scroll up and down a few times to match up the before and after pics because it looks so different now. Great job! I've been feeling a bit depressed about having a concrete slab patio and poured concrete paths in my garden, but seeing how your planting has made crazy paving look good, I feel a lot more positive now! Thanks for sharing

 

WOW WOW , amazing, can't wait for my borders to be ready so that i can plant these kind of plants.. my only downside is i will be starting from scratch so could hit the pocket

 

Again thank you for your kind comments. It's the plants that are the stars I'm just a labourer. I was lucky enough to get a great deal of advice years ago from a professional artist who taught me to think about foliage and shape rather than just flowers which can be so fleeting. I live in Scotland @Gay Gardener not far from St Andrews. I am lucky to live in a lovely area, how much longer it will be lovely to live here depends on what the SNP have in store for us........ I believe there are some very nice parts in Northumberland if things get really dire, sigh!

 

Just thought I'd photograph what the new for 2015 bed looks like now. It's pretty well full of plants so not quite sure what on earth I'm going to do with the excess when time comes to split up those plants which need to be split to keep flowering well. If I lived close to you @shiney you'd be more than welcome to have the excess for you open day. 1 thing is for sure, I ain't making any more flower beds!

 

Thank you @shiney. to be honest if it hadn't been for GC I would never have thought about taking before and after photos. What I have posted on here IS the soul contents of my "diary"! I'm sure I saw a photo of your new bed did I not? You better get out and get snapping before it's too late to see how things have progressed. I was very lucky and got good advice years ago to concentrate on getting good bog standard, easy to grow from seed, cheap to buy, ground covering/weed suppressing herbaceous plants when starting a garden and then augment these with a few star performers. To start a new garden without a big bank balance can be done with a bit of knowhow!
1,000 mile round trip with a artic full of plants, hmmm that might be a touch heavy on transport costs. I'll enquire as to exactly how much from daughter's BF who owns 5 lorries. What's the parking like for an artic at Shineyland!?

 

Your garden is stunning Silu. How long have you been putting it all together?

 

That is very kind of you @Sheal. We've lived here for 13 years. The hard landscaping (miles of crazy paving...groan) was here when we moved in along with some massive trees, a few nice mature shrubs and over 200 dreadful hybrid Tea Roses which had been shockingly planted, pruned, planned (tall in front of short etc) which got taken out and either given away or binned. With a big garden which I do myself I was never going to have time to attend to multiple Roses and our climate isn't really ideal either for many of the highly bred Roses either.
When moving here I did bring with me about a dozen Rhododendrons and Azaleas plus over 300 pots (true) of herbaceous plants. Our nearest neighbours thought we were setting up a garden centre!
For the 1st 8 years here I really didn't do much as I was driving a horsebox all over the UK and helping daughter to try and make it as a professional horse rider plus I had to get both hips replaced. It's only since we stopped the horses (not enough money which you need megga amounts of!) and hips got sorted that I concentrated on the garden. So to answer you question, eventually I've been getting it sort of sorted for 5 years. Because I brought so many plants here it meant I had the stock but needed to completely renovate all the flower/shrub beds which were a total mess.