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| Garden Layout - The Patio Flower Bed
This is the main flower bed in the garden, as it is visible from the living room through the patio doors, and is adjacent to where we sit on summer evenings. |
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| The soil has all been improved, to a depth of 400mm, and is mulched with leaf mould or compost at the start of winter. When the bulbs are all but finished, and the summer bedding is ready for planting out, this mulch is worked into the earth to enrich it for the new plants. |  The Patio bed in High Summer |
| The front of this bed is approximately 150mm higher than the patio paving and the soil is held in check by a low cant kerb, made from the same clay as the paving bricks. The bed gets full sun for most of the day, although the left hand side is shaded until 10am or thereabouts by the fence panel, which steps up from the 600mm height along the flower bed to 1800mm high along the patio, by means of a diagonally cut panel. The bed is planted with a few perennials, such as Spiraea, Thuja, and Euonymus, and is filled with bulbs in the Spring before giving way to bedding plants in early summer. There is a dense clump of single snowdrops, Galanthus nivalis, around the Thuja, and another dense clump of mixed tulips near the heathers, with a few hyacinths in between, and a small patch of Eranthis, the Winter Aconite, nestling among the snowdrops. Over to the left of the bed, there is a patch of Chionodoxa forbesii, that gets better with each passing year. |
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 The Patio bed in Late Spring |
Once the bulbs are finished they are left to die down and build up energy for the next season, their place is taken by summer bedding, which changes from year to year, depending on what I fancy trying out. The Court Jesters Carnations, are a particular favourite, as are Monarch Antirrhinums, but there are usually a few other flowers mixed in, wherever a gap is found, and these include, Gypsophilia, Pansies, Iberis umbellata, the odd fuchsia, Marigolds, both French and African, Sweet Williams and Bidens. Whatever I can find to complete the cottage-garden look. |
| It does tend to look bare in the winter, but I plug the gaps by placing pots of Hellebores, Hebes, Skimmias and Box on the bare earth, where their foliage can be enjoyed not just from the patio, but through the patio doors as well. With the onset of early Spring, further pots of bulbs, especially daffodils, irises and crocuses, are added, to lend their colour while the perennials come back to life.
The patch of Heathers has been worked separately from the rest of this bed, and has been acidified by replacing the soil with a mixture made up of 1 part soil to 1 part ericaceous compost to 1 part grit sand. This patch enjoys full sun for most of the day, and so the Heathers thrive, and have to be trimmed after flowering to prevent them becoming to big and woody. |
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This is a scale diagram of the layout of the Patio flower bed. Passing your mouse over each plant will result in the name of the plant being displayed on your status bar. Clicking on any of these hotspots will take you to the page dedicated to that plant. |
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| Planting Schedule for Patio Bed | |
Perennials
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Bedding see bedding page
Bulbs
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Text, images, design and construction © cormaic web design - Last updated November 1st 2000