Pacific Northwest Gardening: Taming the wild garden, 1 by Laurie1

Laurie1 wrote:
We have started work on what has politely been called the wild garden, which I have now got my eye on for becoming the woodland garden. The area is triangular (with the point lopped off, and measures roughly 22 metres across (this is pacing, not tape measureing) and about 30 metres from bottom to top. It is wider at the top end, and has a 12 degree slope top to bottom, and about 8 degrees side to side. As you can see, it is bounded on the right side by a row of very mature beech trees, the top one is a magnificent copper beech with the blackest leaves you can imagine in summer. In addition there are several other mature trees: two dark leaf prunus, a couple of holly trees, two oaks (Caspar and Pollux - its best to name your trees), 3 Cornus and a new Cornus controverso.

The left side gets sun/dappled sun from early morning to about noon/1PM, the right side has dappled shade in the winter/deep shade most of the year. The soil is clay, fairly acid, and the ground has meadow grass, and WEEDS (dracus mostly, but also bramble, ground elder, and stinging nettle). Some bulbs. I am currently digging out some of the pernicious weeds by hand, and amending the soil by digging in composted bark.

I have been growing woodland plants for the past two years in anticipation, but with little rhyme or reasoning - just plants that have caught my imagination. Currently in hand I have Disporopsis Pernyi, Gillenia Trifolia (Porteranthus), Jeffersonia Dubya, a few trilliums, some hellebores, and a couple of other things I can't think of.

So - what do you say. Can we do some plant combination brainstorming?