Bed Design Ideas Please

Rummer

Hello

I have two beds that I would like to fill this year

Bed 1

1m x 3m and has a fence at the back of it that things could be grown up. It gets the sun almost all of the day and the soil is clay.

Bed 2

Just under 1m x 5m with a rickety fence that has heavy foliage on the other side of it. This bed is shaded almost all of the day and is often quite damp.

That is their basic details and for both beds we would like them to:

• Attract bees and other beneficial insects
• Be low maintenance once established
• Provide year round interest

I look forward to hearing your ideas

I_have_spoken

That's a decent amount of space and opportunity for variety.

TBH, I'd widen the beds, I did 1m in the Glasgow garden and will be moving to 1.5m this year; it's just a bit 'mean' to allow for shrubs/perennials/bulbs.

Bed 2, I'd select from variegated shrubs to lighten the gloom like aucuba japonica, mahonia 'Winter Sun', phyllostachys aureocaulis (yellow bamboo) [with it's root run blocked], corylus avellana 'Contorta' (corkscrew hazel), climbing hydrangea or a camellia unless chalky soil. A white flower chaenomeles (Japanese quince) is nice or hypericum perforatum (St. John's Wort)

Then perennials like foxgloves for height, maybe eupatorium (Joe-Pye weed), astilbe, Siberian iris, hosta, bergenia, lily-of-the-valley, shuttlec0ck ferns, spiderwort, spurge, pulmonaria and primrose. Bulbs, some of the better daffs like tete-a-tete

A 5m bed would really benefit from instant height from a couple of wigwams, maybe with nasturtiums.

Bed 1, so many options but I'd go for a ceanothus (California lilac) as the blue flowers are stunning, maybe with a scrambling rose along fence; you can go for clematis but they're a fiddle for pruning unless you go for montana in which case just get the shears on it. In front of that, I like the daisies but in amongst these dahlias, alliums, lilies and some architectural plants like eryngium 'Miss Willmott's ghost' and grasses such as panicum virgatum 'Heavy Metal'. Then you can add self-seeding annuals like California poppy and bedding annuals such as nicotiana

NB I've not gone near fruit as you said easy care.

Rummer

I would have loved to have larger beds however they are built in and there is a path right next to them so it would be a whole load of work and expense to extend them so I am going to work on them as they are.

jonewer

Chocolate teapots.....

...oh bed design!

Rummer

Thank you for the great ideas I have spoken I will look up all the plants you have recommended

lostinrates

Ok, well, I AM going to go near fruit.

My trained fruit trees give me pleasure, you have a good year to mark with the planting of one, its a couple of fiddles a year, not heavy work.

Much as I love roses, I think a bed a metre width is too narow really, especially with a new walker coming, if its a path you use a lot. I think a trained fruit tree is more decorative year round, AND less work that cutting back bits growing out ward. I'd also suggest a bed that gets sun and is producing might be a place for more decorative edibles that are gorgeous like artichokes, fennel, or even worth considering a bed of edible flowers. I've deciding to try growing just edible flowers in the troughs I've put my hops in, so that I can safely send others out for floral salads without going with them, a floral salad bed sounds fun. It doesn't matter of you don't eat it.

phoebe1989seb

Definitely agree with LIR about the edible flowers - we did this in our ornamental kitchen garden area last year and whilst we didn't manage to eat them all, they certainly added colour and interest to the veg

We have four square raised beds with an obelisk in the centre of each for beans etc and again this adds height/interest and could be as easily adopted in a normal herbaceous bed/border......

Our rose bed is about two metres deep and whilst ours doesn't border a path, it would be of some concern with little ones about if it was as narrow as one metre......imho Otoh, climbing or rambling roses over a fence, wall or trellis at the back of the bed should be fine for Rumlet