Regular viewers of this vlog may remember a few months back I dug out a patch of my heavy clay garden and amended it with compost, homemade liquid seaweed fertiliser and topsoil in preparation for what I hoped would turn out to be a perennial flowering bed that would return bigger and better in the years to come.
00:00You may remember a few months ago I took out a patch of the hard clay and created this bed behind me here and I'm just going to take you around and show you the progress on it.
00:30It's a few months ago and it's doing very well, a lot better than expected. This is a perennial bed which means these plants should come back year on year and most of them are new plants to me and I have never tried to grow these before.
00:49So here we have these are the Rebecca Goldstrom, there's four of them on this side and there's one over on the other side and every one of them is getting ready to flower.
01:00These were bare roots, I didn't expect them to be flowering this year but they're doing very well, they've come on great.
01:08Here we have one of the dahlias growing from seed, look at the many heads on that. I was getting eaten by slugs but I sprayed some garlic water on it that I boiled up myself and it's doing very well.
01:23And in behind there also flowering, you can see the estobbies, I have five estobbies in here altogether. There's a wee young one in the back here, you could just make out it's starting to flower but it's tiny at the moment.
01:38These were bare roots too but these absolutely took off. And these are known for, they're beautiful foliage.
01:46You can see the two tones there, the darker foliage is the older one and then this lighter newer foliage. You just see how much growth it's put on in the last few weeks.
01:55And they can grow on all soil types but they're great for spots like this which is heavy clay which I've amended obviously with compost in that.
02:09I'll maybe link that video as well if you want to have a look at that.
02:13And then there's a smaller, this one done at the same time but it's, it's a much smaller, this is a weed in amongst it here.
02:26So that's a kind of reddish pink and this is the Estalbe Visions, that was the white.
02:33This is the pink, these come back every year for just these big plumes and then after a few years you'll get multiple plumes on them.
02:41And they come in all sort of shades of pink and white and peach. This is a peach one here but it's more of a white peach.
02:50You can see all the little bugs on it there. Loving it in here as well.
02:56And very pollinator friendly and here is more reddish one, dark pink, reddish one.
03:04I have a few over in the other bed too. They're just beautiful plants, very unusual looking and you get different shades of foliage.
03:11Some of them are very, very dark foliage. These ones are green but will change as well.
03:19And on here as well you can see the quadriola are about to start opening.
03:22And these little things will, will get very tall in a few years time. This is Yarrow or Achille.
03:31I have to just watch that it doesn't seed everywhere. And that creates like a, you've ever seen a Kiara flower?
03:37Looks like a, a big flat top with millions of little flowers on them. These are gay feather.
03:46And these upper just like spikes of kind of fluffy pink purplish flowers on them.
03:53And almost the shape like a lupin but just lots of little tiny flowers.
04:01And in here I'm so pleased I've got at least one of these to grow. I grew these from seed.
04:06This one here where you can see now the colour starting on the flower stalks here.
04:14This, this belly buttons.
04:17And Australia, a native of Australia. And it's a perennial too. It should come back.
04:22I grew about 20 of these from seed. This is the last survivor.
04:24There's a smaller one beside it, but it looks like the plants died, but there's still one flower on it.
04:29And, and then these thistle type ones in front are Echinops.
04:34I also grew some of them from seed, but only one of them survived as well.
04:38So these are bare root ones that I've planted and they've taken off urgently as well.
04:43And all these plants were only purchased over the last couple of months.
04:47And as I say, they may have had a few leaves. They may have had nothing just the roots.
04:50But they've done so, so well. Now there are some that I grew from seed, like the belly buttons.
04:56And the other ones here, there's Echinacea here too, which won't flower until next year.
05:04And these are some of the Echinacea that I grew from seed.
05:08And they've been on the ground, but they typically will take a few years to get these large purple cone flowers.
05:15They'll be using the medicine as well, obviously.
05:17And, and see what else. We have a few other things in bother about the bud.
05:23And the data's, a really beautiful colour of purple-eyed pink.
05:28I'm really pleased with that one.
05:30And this one here, which is a, a lemon one.
05:36And then we have a yellow one here up there too.
05:37And these are all from the same flower.
05:43But with data's, you get very different results when you grab the seeds from the flower in the autumn.
05:49And plant them in the next year.
05:52And here we also have some hardy geranium.
05:54This is a michelmars daisy, which will bulk out and create a purple, it's called purple dome.
05:58So that will be quite dramatic.
06:02And that won't flower until end of September, October time.
06:05It's an autumn flower.
06:06So there'll be interest on this border from spring right through.
06:10Here, we have scabias.
06:12This is butterfly blue.
06:14These were grown from seed.
06:15They're quite good in the power craft there last autumn.
06:17And the seed heads were, were blown away.
06:22And then we have a wee geoman here too somewhere.
06:25More echinacea.
06:27And this is a hardy chrysanthemum, which will come back every year.
06:32It's got daisy like pink and white flowers.
06:36So we have three scabias there.
06:38And here we have some lavender that's now in its second year.
06:42I grew this from seed as well.
06:44Just get the smell there, get that beautiful lavender smear.
06:49You can cook with lavender as well.
06:50You can put it on the jams, which is something I'll be doing in the next couple of days.
06:55I've got loads of strawberries and gooseberries.
06:58Need to be used up.
06:59More gay feather there.
07:01And then the rest of these are hardy geraniums.
07:04We have a wee potentilla here.
07:06This is a candy tuft that I grew from seed.
07:11This potentilla is spreading out there.
07:14You can see it all spreading all over the place.
07:16And that'll form like a ground cover to keep the weeds under control.
07:22See it branching out here.
07:24And it produces these beautiful little peachy flowers with a red centre.
07:32Really pretty.
07:33And then these other taller ones here are all flax.
07:37And I'll show you one flax that has opened.
07:39That started to open.
07:40And these will get up to about...
07:42Some of them will be 30 centimetres, some 50, some 70.
07:47So around...
07:49Most of them are around half a metre.
07:52But...
07:54They will produce all sorts of like...
07:57Like masses of lovely wee flowers.
08:00Pink, white...
08:03With all sorts of shades in there.
08:06Some of these are...
08:08Ocean colour as well.
08:10White and blue are the same one.
08:12We also have some delphiniums.
08:14There's an awful lot on here.
08:17Back here as well.
08:18We have...
08:19Back where we started.
08:20This is a sanglosorba.
08:22It's translated blood stenture.
08:24It's actually been used in medicine for thousands of years.
08:28And this will produce big, tall, airy spikes.
