The Old Vicarage B&B, Little Ouse

The rather pretty pink weed that grows several feet high is quite invasive in the ditch area. With some attention to weeding it can be controlled over a coupe of seasons. In the ditch area (water feature) I could go for the usual look, which is to grass seed it and then control using a hover mower or strimmer to manage it as part of the weekly grass cutting regime.

My aim, is to gradually turn the ditch into a garden feature and at the same time make it reasonably low maintenance. To this end, I am opting for plants that are doing well in the garden and also smother weeds with their turberous root systems and also look as if they have the habit to be near water. To this end I am planting sword leaved type plants, such as day lilies, Iris and crocsmia. The three varieties of crocosmia I have so far are Lucifer (red), Emily McKenzie (Orange) and George Davison (Yellow), see pictures.

I planted Lucifer, two years ago in another part of the garden with good sunlight and it is already four time the size across and an ideal candidate for splitting later this year I’ll move some of the new plants this will create to the ditch area (water feature).

And of course there are always more varieties of Iris and day lilies that I come across at the garden centres. I’ll expand the planting as I find new varieties. The good thing about having a Victorian Vicarage garden, is that it is similar to a cottage garden, in that the variety of colour is perhaps more important that creating specific hot and cool borders with certain colours.