Front garden peat-free fruit beds

Over the bank holiday weekend, Ryan and I came to the conclusion that the front gardens aren’t working for us as they are, and came up with a fairly drastic plan to annex one of them into the back garden, in order to provide us with an outdoor dining area. That plan is simmering away in the background, as we work out one or two niggly little details.

The upshot of this decision is that I am going to end up with less planting space, and I am rethinking the priorities for the space that I do have. That means the front garden, with its low-maintenance carpet of perennial edibles, is going to have to work a bit harder. It has poor soil, so the obvious answer was to put some raised beds in there to improve it and plant hungrier plants. I was very keen to find a home for the rhubarb (we really like rhubarb, and would eat as much as we can grow), and when we discussed what else we’d like to have more of, the answer was very fruity – gooseberries, raspberries and blackberries. My gooseberry and raspberry plants have been surviving in pots for years and would be more productive in the ground, and I’ve been looking for an excuse to try the new thornless, trailing blackberry plants (but don’t want to have to keep them watered in hanging baskets!).

And so out came the Feijoa sellowiana, the two Calycanthus floridus and the two buddleja ‘Buzz’. If they survive being unceremoniously ripped out and plonked into pots on a hot day then they will find a new home with my friend Chris. I moved a clump of Babington’s leeks, and one of the two white-flowered daylilies.

Meanwhile, Ryan was building raised beds:

Once they were ready we heaved them into position and plonked them down on top of the ground cover of wild strawberries, and then weeded