Specialty Gardening: By special request., 1 by wallaby1

wallaby1 wrote:
The view from the top of the bank in the opposite direction.

I have a vegetable strip along the fence to the neighbour, a potato patch at the rear which gets too much shade for anything else, I grow potatoes on it each year even though you are supposed to rotate, some do well others not, but I usually get at least 5 months of potatoes from it.

I have three 6' x 8' greenhouses along the back fence, which get morning sun and midday shade with some afternoon sun. The huge tree shades a lot of the garden but it has it's uses.

There is a plum tree which was already here, young but in need of pruning to make it grow, which it did and I get lots of Victoria plums. So do some wasps, butterflies and moth grubs, but I don't need many and they do so I am happy for them to have a food source. I made a bed around the plum tree with some hydrangeas and other plants.

Towards the house I made another triangular bed, and the raised hosta bed under the edge of the tree as grass didn't grow well there. I used the trunks from a multi-stemmed Sycamore tree on the roadside border of the neighbour over the hedge which needed cutting back, it had already been cut back and produced many trunks. These were bolted together at the corners with threaded metal rods.

The hosta bed was filled with mostly soil/leaf mixture from the first digging for 20 years of the brick lined drain, there was plenty of it, with some extra compost added. Some tree roots have ventured up through it, moles have undermined some of it and it needs a top up, but otherwise I am amazed that most of the hostas keep doing well, one has diminished but probably has a mole run under it.