Spring in the Solar

Tuesday 27th
Weather: Cold, wet and overcast

We worked on the Solar Garden bed today, which is in the front of the house. It is the meatiest and biggest bit of area dedicated to bedding. We dug out all the Helichrysum, keeping a few back, Erigeron annuus - the fleabane daisy - keeping ones with good basal growth, Tagetes cinnabar & Tagetes patula (used to blend edges around the patch of Semiarundinaria fastuosa that is there). And cut down the Rudbeckia speciosa, Rudbeckia triloba, Anemone hupehensis japonica down to 6 inches. As the bamboo is rhizomic we had to take out any new shoots that had overstrayed. Then we roughly pruned the Beupleurum fruticosa shrub, done in the cloud style (we will be doing this properly in spring before it flowers, and will be halving the size of it, but have done some preliminary pruning to prevent it from wind rock). We then planted around 200 Tulipa 'Daydream'. We may plant some Antirrhinums of the Bella Bronze and Red series amongst them, but are still contemplating this.