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Building A Raised Bed Garden - Page 7

© Marge Talt

This bed was filled with spent potting soil that I'd been dumping in the spot for some time. It grew great weeds and the plants in the bed seem to love it. You can infill raised beds with various mixes. If you want to build one over grass, you can also cover the turf with several layers of newspaper and add soil. Plant roots will penetrate the newspaper, which will rot along with the grass under it.

Think twice about using geotech fabric or weed blocking fabric. It sounds nice, but I've dug many large clumps of plants whose root systems incorporate permanent sections of weedblocking fabric. Plant roots will grow right through it.

Planting, is, of course, the fun part of building any new garden. I'd been stockpiling plants for a while - and, of course, a few simply had to be purchased especially for this bed. The result was rather too many plants for the space, but I put them in anyway.

I'm rather fond of this bed, although it's planted too closely and a few plants have to be relocated. I've already moved the tiny blue Hosta 'Blue Cadet' who was getting swamped, as well as Tricyrtis 'White Flame' who objected to the direct sun last summer. One of the Heuchera is also buried too deeply by the Euphorbia and needs a new home.

The primary occupants are three assorted Euphorbia and four different purple leaf Heuchera. I'm quite taken with the combination of foliage and flower colors these provide. Cheek by jowl with them are:

Geranium sanguineum and G. s. 'Lancastrense' whose starry foliage makes a good contrast with the larger Heuchera leaves.

Geranium 'Johnson's Blue' (not as happy as I'd like - I think it resents the crowding),

Bergenia cordifolia (holding, but not blooming - at least not dying),

Carex morrowii 'Silk Tassel' - a rather nice, fine leafed sedge,

Carex buchananii (the rust colored hair-like foliage at the top of the photo),

Ceratostigma griffithii (whom I hope I haven't killed by too severe pruning),

Indigofera kirilowii who is finally coming into its own and blooming nicely. The foliage on this plant resembles a black locust a bit, an interesting contrast with other occupants of the bed,

Several fall blooming Crocus laevigatus 'Fontenayi',

Some Colchicum,

A Digitalis and a Campanula snagged at a plant exchange whose labels washed clean quickly and whom I do not actually have ID'd...

There's also a Cotoneaster horizontalis cutting I'd made from the garden, a Louisiana iris given me by a friend and one Tellima grandiflora grown from seed.

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