News from the green world

 There is always high potential for improvement in our garden.

There are some flowerbeds that would require some love and we have had also some serious problems, like having Japanese knotwood issues as our neighbours have it in their garden, on the border with ours. 

I am now focusing on three flower beds - one that our gardener, Pia, had tried to improve last year after I had failed to plant some hosta (which i like a lot). 

Last year she planted some lungwort, which survived to this year despite the slugs eating them up heavily during the previous season. She then recommended to plant some geranium, that seems not popular with them.

Let's see if we manage to fill this flowerbed, which is in a very shadowy spot of the garden and make it a bit more maintenance free.

After I planted the geranium and the hosta

I have started to work on another flowerbed, and planted few on one of the flowerbeds I put more effort as there is ground elder suffocating everything (and me). 

I did an investment in few perennial plants and I hope they will manage to survive this time.

The problem with the knotwood is that is very invasive and that we have had to come with a plan about what to do.

We discussed first removing part of the hedge, move out plants from a relatively big area, cover it for at least a decade and hope for the best. We ended up, after cutting the relevant part of the hedge and moving some plants, that maybe it was smoother to use Roundup, despite us not being very keen in chemicals. 

I am just afraid of the consequences on the surrounding vegetation (and our well and cats), even though I have moved around some of it - but maybe not far enough? And anyway now the whole area looks like there has been a tractor detroying everything...

We had removed the fence

The knotwood and part of the area that we had planned to cover at first

The knotwood