gardening the swamp

Tiny seedling weeds were starting to spring up in the gunnera bed, and I thought I'd better start planting my own choice of bog plants there, before the weeds grew any more and I was back to square one.  Hoeing was not an option, so I stirred the surface of the mud around with a fork and hoped the bittercress would drown.  Even though I'd done my research on which species would grow in boggy conditions, it felt strange puddling the nice solid root balls of my expensively amassed plants into such a wet mess, and I couldn't quite believe that they wouldn't all instantly start to rot.  However, the books, websites and the boss's labels say that Osmunda regalis, Lysichiton camtschatcencis, Darmera peltata, Primula bulleyana and Filipendula rubra 'Venusta' will grow in wet places, so here's hoping they're right.  Sometimes learning by doing feels as though it might be a costly exercise.

The front of the bed, which was very wet about a decade ago, has dried out again as the springs have moved, and I replanted an iris there that was drowning round at the back.  I couldn't work out from my not up to date spreadsheet which one it was, but it looked as though it could do with more sun and drier feet.  There was a reasonable sized gap to plant up, once I'd weeded out the horsetail, and I can't remember what used to be there, but filled it with a replacement Iris confusa 'Martyn Rix' and some fresh Thalictrum flavum glaucum.  The iris 'Martyn Rix' is an unusual looking thing, which visitors used to mistake for a low growing bamboo, when it wasn't producing iris flowers, and my original plant spread to make a good sized patch, but the two cold winters did for it.  I'm not sure what happened to the previous generation of Thalictrum, but suspect they were over-run by the yellow bamboo.  A pink flowered Thalictrum is seeding itself usefully, and looks very happy in the front half of the bed, so with any luck the yellow flowered version will do equally well there.

I tried a Cardamine quinquefolia in the corner in fairly deep shade.  It may prove too shady for it, but I won't know until next spring, since it's a woodlander that dies down pretty quickly after flowering in the spring, and my new plant was in the process of dying back naturally when snails hastened it on its way.  It is a member of the cabbage family, with typical cruciferous four petalled flowers in an agreeable shade of pink.  Some sources describe it as spreading slowly, while others say it is quite rampant.  I think growing conditions have a lot to do with it, and I expect my very shady corner will slow it down.  Of course, if it never comes up at all I may not remember having planted it.

A group of three saxifrages of yet another variety, bought from the Chatto Gardens, went in front of the new deck.  I thought that low evergreen ground cover would be good there, rather than growing something too tall that would get kicked when we walked out to the deck, and the soil looked about right, not too wet, not too dry.  The general rule at the Chatto nursery is that you have to write your own label, rather than getting a printed one like the boss provides at work, and I'd made a note on the reverse of my label that the instruction on the nursery label warned 'not too dry'.

Stems of the yellow bamboo keep leaning over.  I've cut out some of the worst ones, and tied others to iron plant supports driven into the ground inside the clump.  This is a long-standing difficulty, and I've never seen it mentioned in books or articles about growing bamboos, so I don't know why mine decline to grow vertical and self-supporting.  Maybe I'll find somebody to ask at The Chelsea Flower Show.

At the top end of the gunnera bed the Systems Administrator is building a narrow walkway to give me dry shod access across the swamp to the back of the bed, for maintenance.  My plan is then to put alder logs like stepping stones around the back of the bed, to link up with the new deck.  I don't suppose that I, or anybody else, will step along them very often, but I think the idea of them will be playful and appealing to the eye.  Just so long as any visiting small children don't fall off them into 20cm of mud, otherwise I shall be in trouble with their parents.

Addendum  At least one of the new little hens has started laying small pullet eggs.  I found one in the egg box this morning, and this afternoon the SA was concerned to find a little hen sitting in the egg box, in case she was ill, so was relieved to discover it was because she was laying.