HERBACEOUS PERENNIALS FOR A MIXED BORDER

While my love of roses has not diminished, my tolerance for caring for them has.  With aphid infestations and diseases such as mildew, black spot and rust attacking them yearly, I found myself having to use pesticides and fungicides.  This goes against my desire to have my garden, as much as possible, a place for wildlife to enjoy.  As you know, spraying roses can impact on insects such as bees, and that's just not on.  We have to protect our bees.  Mostly, in my garden, I get the beautiful Bumble Bees.  I still have several roses which tend not to be too problematic, so far, and need little or no spraying at all, and they have a reprieve, for now.  Yesterday I visited the Royal Horticultural Society garden centre at Harlow Carr and chose several new plants.  I am going to have a mixed herbaceous border and hope to be able to create an environment like I had once before in a much larger garden, many years ago. 

Peaceful garden in Pye Nest, Halifax, England in the 1980-1990s

Of course, I had space for a pond, back then.  But I think you can see from the border in the foreground the kind of effect that I am looking to achieve now.  Those plants needed no spraying, the covered a lot of ground and, therefore, suppressed weeds, they died back in winter and were fully hardy so needed no winter protection, and only occasionally needed lifting and dividing which simply meant more plants for the garden.  Herbaceous perennials are a win win type of plant.

 

Light and Shade, Hardiness Ratings and Zones

In following posts I shall itemise the plants that I have selected although I am sure that many more will be finding their way into my garden this year.  The idea in planting a herbaceous border is to have the taller plants at the back and the lower plants at the front.  If a mistake is made, it is easy enough to uplift a plant, disturbing as little of the roots as possible, and reposition it.