All in a days work!

[Palustris]

This is what we achieved this afternoon, starting admittedly with a bare(ish)piece of soil which has been treated with Roundup for the last 2 months.

About 1.30 pm. today

Mid-afternoon

5 o' clock ish

6.30 ish.
Not bad going. We will leave it like that, so any weeds left alive can be treated and then plant between the cobbles with ?

[Palustris]

[Gardengirl]

Well done Eric - you certainly have worked hard today, especially if it has been as hot where you are as here in Herts :)

It looks great.  What about including some grasses amongst your cobbles.  I love them and only wish I had that amount of space to experiment with.

Pat

[eileen]

Could do with someone like you around here Eric!!

Not an effort at all.  ;D

I like Pat's suggestion of grasses as there are so many different coloured ones up for grabs nowadays.

Keep us updated on what you decide on putting in   won't you?

Eileen.

[Roy Bham UK]

Not bad going. We will leave it like that, so any weeds left alive can be treated and then plant between the cobbles with ?

Tree ferns ???

Roy ;D

[Palustris]

Opposite this bed is the Daisy Lawn, where there are about 20 sorts of grasses from Stipa gigantea to tiny little New Zealand ones, whose name I have forgotten, so grasses, though thanks for the suggestion, are not really what we had in mind.
Thanks Roy, at £25 per foot I think tree ferns are a bit out of our pocket.
The whole piece of garden is only 3 metres at the top and about 5 metres on the left side.
It is quite shady and dry so I may look for very tiny ferns or maybe Hepatica nobilis.
Or ?  

[Roy Bham UK]

Eric, you can buy small hardy tree ferns like Dicksonia antarctica at a reasonable price, :)
most of my small ferns I purchased from http://www.fibrex.co.uk/index.html
And found them very reasonably priced too.

Cyathea smithii beautiful trunked fern quite hardy.
http://www.angelfire.com/bc/eucalyptus/treeferns/smithii.html

Cyrtomium falcatum rochfordianum foliage a little different from the norm. http://davesgarden.com/pdb/go/56202///

Cyathea cooperi very ellegent fern but not particularly hardy but worth a little pampering in a cold snap. I have two small plants of these.
http://www.angelfire.com/bc/eucalyptus/treeferns/cooperi.html

Cyrtomium fortunei flat foliage different.
http://davesgarden.com/pdb/go/52915/index.html//

Polystichum munitum hardy fern
http://www.rainyside.com/features/plant_gallery/nativeplants/PolystichumMunitum.html

Polystichum braunii quite hardy and pretty.
http://www.fronds.co.nz/product.html?p=81

I have all these in pots and more, some of them make good ground cover, I just wish I had a large garden to display them better, hope this helps. :-\

Roy ;D

[Palustris]

Thamks. I grew almost all the ferns we have in the shade garden from spores got from various seed exchanges. If you are really interested in ferns there are 2 books to look out for. Hardy Ferns by Reginald Kay. from the 1950's and Martin Rickard Garden Ferns, more recent.
We have to be very careful about hardiness here. In the last 8 years we have only escaped frost in August and then only by 1 day!. Our tree fern died, even in the greenhouse where the temperature reached -8c. under the bubble plastic, so you can see  we do have a coldness problem.
Thasnks anyway, there are some really lovely ferns available.

[Garden Manager]

Sounds great Eric - if only i could see it!

No images not even a red X in white box. Nothing! On any browser.  >:(

[Garden Manager]

I can now see it _ strange goings on there for a while.

Now i can see it also LOOKS good too.

Plants - if shady, then definetly go for shade lovers.

One question, What was there before eric? You say you had a weed problem there but what else was there other than weeds?

[Palustris]

Allsorts of herbaceous perennials, geraniums, asters, delphiniums and so on, but they did not thrive. The soil is virtually non existent. Previous owners mended caravans and used that area as a parking lot so they filled it up with large gravel. Digging is impossible. Now there is a large Cherry tree, a potentially large Holly and a rather nice Cotoneaster plus a Rose (me planting roses, never) but this is Rosa wardii, an American species grown for its hips and a Hebe grown from wild collected New Zealand seed so not sure of the name. There are lots of snowdrops and dwarf daffs in the soil, so tiny ferns may well be the answer.