Garden design

[watervole]

I love my neighbours!

Not only are they paying me to mow, weed and trim their garden, but they've just given me a plant-buying budget to play with. There's a general request for blues/lilacs/soft colours and a natural look to it. Beyond that, they trust me to pick something that will work.

This is so exciting! My mind is playing with ideas. I'd already thought that some silvery foliage might work well and that would fit in very well with blues as there's several plants with a silvery tint to the leaves that have blue flowers.

I'm toying with a globe thistle http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plant_finder/plant_pages/7607.shtml as a centrepiece. Catmint, lavender, bluebells, iris, what else would people suggest?

Anyone fancy making a fork and trowel icon for me?

Comments

[megamole.livejournal.com]

Gank this. Already LJ-presized.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

Forget-me-not?

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Definitely. And maybe a blue iris too.

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

Ummm... being less than expert, I don't know many, but what about love-in-a-mist? We have it setting seed every year and I think it'd go with a soft look (of course , it also sets seed in the lawn every year too, so one has to watch it). Grape hyacinths are also lovely, and would suit a small garden maybe?

We have irises, blue, purple and white (plus one powder blue - we have no idea where it came from, it just appeared and grew like Topsy, but is very pretty).

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Love in a mist. Good one. I will add that to my list.

grape hyacinths are OUT. They spread horribly and almost took over my rockery at one point. It took four years of hard work, but I think I may have finally defeated them.

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

Fair enough :) Ours didn't run amuck, could have been the vastly different climate...

[kerravonsen]

Lamb's ears are pretty, silvery and furry... http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/plants/plant_finder/plant_pages/885.shtml

[watervole.livejournal.com]

That's a definite possiblity. Does well in dry soils too.

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

Campanula, they come in white as well. Grape hyacinth, cornflowers.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Campanula is good, grape hyachinths are not (they spread too far and too fast). Cornflower - good thought

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

grape hyachinths are not (they spread too far and too fast)

I've not noticed spreading in my garden, escaping but not spreading. My parents planted about 12 in the center of the garden about 30 years ago, there are about 30 within inches if the end wall now but nothing in between. they moved slowly across the lawn in that period but left nothing behind.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I've been to check the tag on the silvery-leaved bedding plant I put in recently which has vroomed (two-thirds of the bedding plants I put in die; of the rest, half do not much and half go vroom), and it's Helichrysum microphylla silver.