my miniature desert

The gravel garden by the entrance is coming along quite nicely.  This started off as a lawn, a blank space between two borders, when I began laying the garden out two decades ago.  It was never a very good lawn, given the light soil, average annual rainfall of only twenty inches, and my more or less complete lack of enthusiasm for turf, except as a vaguely flat, vaguely green neutral expanse to fill the void between masses.  After a few years we glyphosated all the grass in the front garden, meandering blank lawn and turning circle both, and covered them with gravel, which has proved far more amusing.

We were not copying Beth Chatto's famous gravel garden.  Faced with a similar set of conditions, we came to similar conclusions, that drought adapted plants were the thing to grow, and that gravel was an affordable way of covering a large area that would look in keeping with its surroundings.  If I copied anything, it was Keith Wiley's desert wash inspired planting at The Garden House in Devon, and the one at East Ruston Old Vicarage up in Norfolk, but on a miniature scale, since the space I had available to play with was just the little left over end of the never very seriously considered former lawn.  If I were starting again, I would put much more thought into laying out the front garden, and do it very differently, but there you go.  Gardening is one of those things, like life, that you learn largely by doing.  Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait.

Berkheya purpurea really, really likes it there.  This is a purple flowered daisy from South Africa, with silvery, hairy, bristly leaves.  It disappears totally in the winter, but comes back from below ground each spring, every year forming bigger and fatter clumps, and seeding itself in a modest way.  Incredibly sharp drainage, full sun and low fertility are evidently to its taste.  Long live Berkheya.  I started with it in the long border, where despite its hairiness it seemed to get eaten by snails, but the middle of the gravel is perfect for it.  You may see it in garden centres, but it is easily raised from seed, which is not too hard to track down.

Morina longifolia has done pretty well too, apart from one plant that was undermined by ants. According to the books it can be tricksy to keep, so I'm pleased about it has stuck around.  It makes tufts of bright green leaves with edges crimped like a pie-crust, and sends up tall stems with whorls of pink flowers.  You will find it round and about in garden centres, though it is not the easiest thing to keep alive for any length of time in a pot.

The assorted Eryngiums I planted last year have survived and are sending up flowering spikes.  One even has two tiny babies nearby in the gravel.  Eryngium comes in two types.  Most are tap-rooted variants on sea holly, but there are also clump formers with spiny, strap shaped leaves.  One such is Eryngium eburneum, which produces tall stems of small spiky flowers in white rather than the usual blue.  A couple of seed-raised plants went into the entrance gravel the year before last, and are bulking up nicely.

You will be getting the general theme by now, which is one of spikiness.  Teazels are allowed to self seed, as they fit the overall look, though they don't grow so tall and fine as they would somewhere slightly damper.  They are survivors, but not drought specialists.  Not spiky, but allowed in by virtue of its vivid colour and the fact that it does so well there, is Zauschneria californica.  This is a sub-shrub, another drought lover that retreats entirely below ground for the winter months as its old stems die down, but produces new, silvery leaved growth in the spring, suckering into a spreading patch if happy.  The flowers, which come usefully late in the season, are brilliant red.  They tend to straggle unattractively in pots, while if watered too much they will die, first of all odd stems and then the entire plant, so they are not the easiest thing for a retailer to manage and if you want one you may have to hunt around.  I have not yet tried digging up any of the underground shoots and planting them elsewhere, so don't know whether begging a piece of a plant from anyone you know who has one would be likely to work or not.  Now I have asked myself the question I had better try it and see what happens.  I'll let you know in due course.