Climbers in the Garden!

Since building the raised bed along the side wall, I’ve been oohming and ahhhing about which climbing plants I wanted to buy. In the past when I’ve gone shopping for new plants, I’ve just selected plants that caught my eye and were on offer at the time. Fore-thought is definitely not something I’ve done with plant shopping before. However, because I built this raised bed to act as a privacy barrier against the road on the other side, I needed plants that would live through winter and also stay green and ‘bushy’. There would be little point in having privacy through the summer and then when everything dies back in winter be exposed again. I wanted something hardy and evergreen.

I did some research using the online store crocus.co.uk and also the RHS website. Crocus.co.uk helps suggest plants that work well together, it also shows you on a human-size scale how large they grow, tells you what care they need, what soil, sun/shade, etc in a really easy-to-understand kind of way. The RHS website is also fab and tells you all sorts of information – like what colour their leaves are in each season. Since I was only looking for a small order, I didn’t order from crocus.co.uk as I didn’t want to incur the delivery charge. I know, what a tight-ass!

After doing some research, and also talking to our neighbour about her plants – I knew I wanted a honeysuckle. Also on my possible list was an evergreen clematis.

I popped to our local garden centre, which by the way, is HUGE, and their prices are extra-ordinarily brilliant! I thoroughly recommend if you’re in the Nottinghamshire/Lincolnshire region! Anyway – I love the whole garden centre shopping experience.. We never visit without stopping for a coffee in the cafe. I’ve literally been through heaps of free coffee’s from filling up my loyalty card, addicted much?

With a list in mind, I head off searching for said climbers. I had set myself a limit of £20, and £6 for more compost. They had so much variety to chose from! I actually took photos of all the options I was considering and then deliberated over my choices over a coffee 😉

In the end, I went for two climbers: a honeysuckle and a potato tree.

Both are quite vigorous climbers and do need quite a bit of pruning to keep them under control, however I think this will hopefully mean these two climbers alone will be enough to cut the view out to the road, and thus give us all the privacy! The potato tree (that’s the purple one) is semi-evergreen, which I wasn’t quite sure what that exactly meant – apparently they may either lose their leaves for a very short period or just lose half their leaves through winter. Either way, I thought the flowers were much too beautiful not to snap up!

I’ve planted them in the formation of yellow – purple – yellow, so hopefully when they grow the colour mixture shall be b e a u t i f u l !

Elsewhere in the garden:

These roses are doing far less well. No blooms yet, and other than the giant one on the right, none of them have even began to bud. I’m guessing they’re still recovering from being moved last year, and I also think the brick border doesn’t hold water too well, which means they’re all competing a bit too much… hmm.

And that’s it! I can’t wait for these climbers to CLIMB!