A little soliloquy on a bed I have just been weeding in our garden. Unfortunately in other parts of the garden a machete is more necessary!
An American gardener has said that 90% of gardening is weeding. If this is so, an essential feature of the gardener is to enjoy weeding! In a large garden the problem becomes more difficult and the tendency is to go into certain areas in succession and work on them intensively before moving on to the next. There is the element of 'Painting the Forth Bridge' about it. On the smaller scale of alpines the scree-like soils and gravel top-dressing, and sheer fascination of the plants, really do make weeding a pleasure, and little and often is probably the better policy. With bulbs though the annual cycle of growth that these go through leads to a different way of tending them. This small bed in our lawn originally was the site of a weeping cherry which was eventually removed and the bed extended with liberal amounts of stone chippings in order to grow a wide range of bulbs. After these go over though interest is maintained into the autumn with small late perennials, notably sedums and self-seeding Eryngium bourgatii. Come October the autumn crocus are just beginning to come through, followed through the winter and spring with many more bulbs, so the bed needs to be thoroughly tidied up. These pictures show the bed 'before' and 'after' with still a few sedums left to keep some colour.
Generally the bed works quite well and keeps interest right through the year but both the sedums and eryngium and a number of other plants self-seed generously in the gravelly soil so a good bit of weeding is necessary. Not something probably that is taught at Horticultural College. But certainly an essential feature of making a garden.
