third time lucky?

Today's forecast was for the rain to hold off until 4.00pm, so they've been rolling back their expectations since the start of the week.  In fact it stayed dry until 3.00pm, when the first heavy drops backed by a rumble of thunder drove me indoors.  I've shifted my attentions in the back garden to the island bed.  It would be very nice to get one area properly finished and then move on to the next, but the weeds have started growing worryingly quickly in the island bed, and need tackling before they get completely out of hand.

This is a long, triangular bed that sits in full sun between the top lawn and the grass track to the bottom lawn.  It was a low-maintenance, largely self-sustaining area for several years.  A mixture of Cistus, Stipa gigantea, Lupinus arboreus and Verbena bonariensis seeded themselves around, keeping the centre of the bed pretty full and hiding the creeping sorrel and horsetail.  There's a Judas tree, Cercis siliquastrum, an Osmanthus delavayi on one corner, which is kept clipped to form a dome, an ochre yellow conifer, Thuja occidentalis 'Rheingold' on the second corner, next to a driftwood sculpture which the cats unaccountably persist in regarding as a scratching post, and a low bulging hedge of Lonicera nitida 'Baggesen's Gold' nips off the apex of the triangle.  A glaucous leafed form of Kniphofia and a Yucca do pretty well, as do Crocosmia 'Lucifer', which seeds itself mildly, and Crocosmia 'George Davidson', which doesn't self seed but bulks up at the root.  Some of the more drought-tolerant asters are happy, and various odds and bobs like a bright red flowered ancestor of the oriental poppy hybrids that I raised from seed, and a Galtonia, ditto.  Robinia hispida sprawls about as a free standing shrub, bits breaking off when there's a gale, and Phlomis russeliana is happy to take more space than it really merits.  Penstemon have come and gone over the years, and shrubby Potentilla.  Sedum 'Matrona' was good, and now needs rescuing before it is overwhelmed by the Osmanthus.    Some pink bearded iris like it there, and Chamaecytisis purpureus, and an Eremurus, though I must remove the Phlomis advancing on its crown.  Foxtail lilies need their own space.  There are some chrysanthemums for late colour, but it is a bit dry for them.  For a long time it was a trouble free area, that looked good throughout the year, with a fair amount of evergreen foliage and some seed heads to look at in the winter.

Trouble started after the first very cold winter, which killed most of the Cistus.  I weeded, mulched and replanted, in time to be clobbered by the second cold winter.  Second time around I went for some hardier subjects, including Rosa glauca which seems to need full sun, and whose pewter coloured foliage should look good with the Cistus, should any survive.  But I'm still looking at great gaps between shrubs that should touch each other when they are full grown, and some of the new planting has died.  I'm getting fed up with replacing Coronilla, whose perpetual, scented yellow flowers are purely mythical in my garden as the plants always die.  I'm not sure whether to try with Romneya coulteri just one more time, since while I've failed twice already, which is normally my limit, it is notoriously difficult to establish planted out of a pot.  There is green beneath the bark on the twigs of the Clerodendron trichotomum, but the leaf buds seem dead, presumably killed by frost, and since that's the second of those to fail I'm wondering whether to go for a nice Euonymus instead.

Into the gaps between the survivors, lovingly mulched with mushroom compost within the past twelve months, goose grass and grass grass are springing up, now we've had some rain, and those need ripping out and a good layer of Strulch applied as soon as possible.  Towards the top of the bed, where I never reached last time round with the manure, grass is also growing, but is much harder to weed out since the soil is less friable.  The difference in soil texture as well as colour between the areas that were and were not dosed with mushroom compost is notable.  Sadly it doesn't go down very far, though if I kept adding compost for another fifty years I dare say it would.  The grass springing up between the asters also needs to come out pronto, before the asters get any taller, and that end of the bed needs mulching with compost and then Strulching.  And then, if only this year's replacement plants would not mostly die on me, I'd be there, provided I get to the end of the job before some other area becomes even more pressingly urgent.

Addendum  I said I'd tell you whether the asters that I moved and split in winter survived, given that the books say you should do it in April.  They did.  At least, I would not swear that every single root had survived, but where I left the old stalks sticking up, to remind me that there was something there, a healthy crops of basal foliage has appeared.  So, irritatingly, have some spears of creeping thistle.  One glyphosate treatment was evidently not enough.  Remember that I did this on very light soil, albeit dosed with mushroom compost, and on a slope.  I wouldn't guarantee the same result if you try it at home on badly drained clay.