Grass growing through plants

ripplyuk

The plants are all over the place. Not in one spot. If I start digging round them my garden will look awful with bare patches of soil everywhere. Should I dig them out and put them all in one place or will that kill the plants? Some of them have been there for 3yrs now. I don’t want to ruin them.

To make a bed, do I have to dig through all the soil? It all sounds complicated. Maybe I should get a gardener. I obviously haven’t done things right.

unrecordings

Don't suppose you could post a photo ? Might help us advise a little better. For instance if the spacing is right, you could make one or two big beds with some kind of feature (bench or whatever) to balance out the empty space

To make a bed, you just need to peel back the turf then neaten up the edges, probably a job for a gardener from what you're saying - though a gardener in will probably recommend hoiking everything out and starting again - resulting (probably/possibly) in the loss of what you've put in so far.

The only other thing I can think of right now is getting creative with a strimmer (or a more precise instrument if one exists), and very very carefully trim the grass round the other stuff you've planted

sheramber

ripplyuk wrote: »

There’s all sorts of different plants. A rose, some phlox, rosemary and a honeysuckle and lavender, lambs ears and more. I didn’t know what else to do. It seemed normal to just dig a hole in the lawn and plant them. I’ve seen other gardens just have bare soil round the plants and I thought that looked messy. I didn’t know grass would grow through them. There’s no barriers around mine.

Now you know why these people had clear borders around their plants. . Unless you keep the are around them clear then the grass will grow through them.

Shifting the plants at this time of year would not be a good idea but the only way to get rid of the grass through them is to dig them up and laboriously pick out the grass roots from among the plant roots. After lifting the plants soaking the roots to soften the soil around the roots would make it easier to find the grass roots.
That would be better done in the autumn- October time.

In the meantime you could prepare a one or more beds to replant them in. Dig out an area of grass a spade depth and turn the sod over to lay it upside down in the bed. The turf buried below the surface will rot down and provide good soil base for planting in in the autumn.

You can make borders at the edge of the grass or have beds within the grassed area. Just make sure you leave the grass area easy to mow.

elsien

Stick a photo up - that might get you some more suggestions.

-taff

Create a bed around a group of them if you have a group, or cut the turf away in a circle from them, the mulch with bark chippings.
If you plant a plant in a lawn, how did you not know that grass would grow in between them? No wonder it's difficult to mow.


If you wanted to move any othem, yes, you have to dig a hole, dig them up and replant. Yes, some of them may die of you do this.
There aren't many solutions to not having a defined bed where grass doesn't grow besides digging it out.
Whereabouts in the country are you?

ripplyuk

-taff wrote: »

Create a bed around a group of them if you have a group, or cut the turf away in a circle from them, the mulch with bark chippings.
If you plant a plant in a lawn, how did you not know that grass would grow in between them? No wonder it's difficult to mow.


If you wanted to move any othem, yes, you have to dig a hole, dig them up and replant. Yes, some of them may die of you do this.
There aren't many solutions to not having a defined bed where grass doesn't grow besides digging it out.
Whereabouts in the country are you?

I’m in Northern Ireland. I just thought the grass would grow around them but not through them. I put a lot of them along the sides of the garden but some have got so big that I can’t mow round them anymore and other ones just look swamped with grass. I think one might have died.

I can try to get a photo but it won’t show much because the garden is at a right angle and the plants are well spaced out.

I’ll just have to dig them up and hope some survive being replanted. Where a lot of them are planted is really stony and I couldn’t dig that so they’ll have to be moved. I really didn’t want to have plants in a bed anyway because it doesn’t look nice but it seems like the only way. I guess that’s why everyone does it.

Davesnave

ripplyuk wrote: »

I really didn’t want to have plants in a bed anyway because it doesn’t look nice but it seems like the only way. I guess that’s why everyone does it.

I'm struggling to understand why you think that plants growing together in what's admittedly a contrived association, 'don't look nice.'

The only semi-natural place where one sees plants growing in a 'lawn,' is where animals are constantly mowing the grass by eating it, leaving the tough and often unpalatable plants that can survive. In this country that might be gorse, heather, bracken etc. However, even the moors and similar places are contrived environments, which would soon change without human intervention.

If beds in gardens are fake, then what you see in the countryside is mostly just as fake too. The trick for some gardeners is to create a fake that looks as if it could be natural, while others don't give a stuff and plant rows of things like marigolds. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but if you know the logic behind what you're setting out to achieve, it helps.

ripplyuk

Davesnave wrote: »

I'm struggling to understand why you think that plants growing together in what's admittedly a contrived association, 'don't look nice.'.

I just think it looks prettier to have grass instead of bare soil around the plants. Or bark. And there’s always gaps between the plants which looks messy and unfinished. I didn’t realise they take so long to grow or I would have planted mine much closer together. Maybe that would have helped stop the grass growing through them.

I’m not sure making a bed is going to work for all these plants either. I planted them in different places because of what it said on the labels. Some of them like full sun, the lemon balm likes shade, some like really dry soil so I put them up on the bank and others like it more damp and rich. There’s no one place that will suit them all. My garden was renovated a couple of years ago and new soil was brought in. I tested it and it’s more alkaline than the older part of the garden so that will cause problems too if I move the plants. The soil won’t suit all of them.

-taff

The trouble with grass is that it'll keep growing unless it's regularly cut. Grass is just baby savanna that we artifically keep that way. If you think of your lawn as something that's trying to become savannah or woodland, that instantly tells you that we artifically keep the garden in the state we want it.
Some plants and trees do discourage grass from growing around them because they emit a kind of poison, or they just shade it out completely.
If you want to have gass growing round them, have you thought about planting grasses like stipa or flowering grasses?

Maybe do a google image search for natural looking beds or bed mulches to see what the possibilities are.
With plants also, sometimes they will surprise you by where they will actually thrive depsite the labels on them.

unrecordings

In addition to the excellent advice being posted - you could consider pots for some of the plants - for example we keep Lemon Balm & similar herbs in pots near the back door (which admittedly does have the convenience of both full sun and shady areas)