Gardening on the edge
(Filed: 21/04/2001)
When blackbirds had a party in his borders, Fred Whitsey rediscovered the creative possibilities of edging plants
THANKS to the blackbirds in our garden, I have become obsessed with edgings. We have a lot of grassy glades that run between beds of shrubs, and each year I mulch between the shrubs with our own leaf mould. I swear that the blackbirds watch me at it, just waiting until my back is turned.
For years these pests used to scatter the leaf mould over the grass as they rootled for worms. The mess blurred the contrast between green turf and blackish beds and destroyed the patterns created by the shadows.
Both the shrubs and the mulching were, of course, supposed to help me cut down on maintenance, but I had not reckoned with the mischief of the blackbirds. Several times a week I would clean up after them with a plastic rake, but before long they were busy again.
The only solution was to come up with a device to contain the mulch where it was supposed to lie. I had often noticed how heather grows along the fringes of woodland as well as on open heaths, so I planted bands of heather along the sides of the shrub beds that got the sun. I chose the fresh green Cornish species Erica vagans which, if sheared over every year in spring, has a mossy appearance in winter. I thought it would also give an extra flowering season to the beds.
Behind this barrier, the birds could scrabble about in the mulch as they liked without spreading it on to the grass. But there were other benefits, too. Perspectives were enhanced. Since the glades were outlined more strongly, the vistas seemed longer than they really were.
This was an encouragement to cure the problem on a larger scale. A requirement of the plants I used to extend the scheme was that they should be evergreen and help to keep the garden alive in the dead months.
The plan worked wonderfully. It seemed to put a finish on informally planned areas of the garden, rather as box and walling stone edgings do in the formal areas. And I had now begun to get hooked on edgings for more than practical reasons, you see, in constantly recreating the garden by always replanting,
I have not aimed at producing an idealised woodland scene. I see a garden as artificial: a place to display plants as if in a collection (albeit one limited by interest and taste).
Most of our shrub beds are shaded by trees. For my edgings, however, I needed to use plants that would grow happily in the shade, flower well there and not become drawn. What plants did we have in plenty that could be divided into many small clumps?
Bergenias at once presented themselves. Glossy-leaved, dense in growth, shade-tolerant, flowering early in the spring, easy to propagate and increase - they were ideal candidates for the job. No matter that they now run back into the beds and between the foreground shrubs: they make you feel you can never have too much of them.
Those stalwart varieties of massive growth, the red 'Abendglut' and 'Bressingham White', were so abundant that I had enough for bold plantings. Then, where the scale had to be less expansive, I propagated a lot of the near-miniature 'Baby Doll' cultivar, which might almost have been specially bred for growing as a neat edging.
We had broad patches of the small, grassy grape hyacinth Liriope muscari, which gives such pretty cobalt-blue spires in autumn. Divide them up and use them as ribbons to garland mixed flowerbeds. I confess to pinching the idea from the National Trust garden at Erddig near Wrexham, where they have a parterre carried out in the liriope's black-leaved relation Ophiopogon 'Nigrescens'.
I moved on with a firmer hand. Running round two thirds of the garden's perimeter we have a horseshoe path I pretentiously call "the hellebore walk" because alongside it we have a collection of Lenten roses in colourings from whites to a near-black indigo. Why not divide up those great stands of the winter-berried Iris foetidissima and outline the length of the path with this noble plant?
The path is now defined much more strongly as it wanders between the shrubs and trees, and the sword-like iris foliage contrasts with the many-fingered leaves of the hellebores.
Our latest essay in edging has been to draw defining lines
with the grassy-leaved Libertia formosa alongside twin
borders planted differently in each season: with repeated
camellias and white daffodils for spring, peonies in early
summer, day lillies a little later in the season and
Japanese anemones to bring the sequence to a close. The
libertia introduces another summer incident to the
succession of flowers, but also adds a perennial unifying
element to an area where, formerly, there was diversity.
-- Anonymous, May 15, 2001