Please be gentle with me as I am no gardener and new to this site!
I have decided to completely clear all plants from a very neglected border and have got half way through pulling up what I can. I want to plant some "easy care" plants in the spring and would like to know what I should do now and over the intervening period in order to get the border ready for planting. Please be aware I have very little cash so please only give me cheap or free ideas!!
Also some advice on what to plant in the spring would be good (I live in the north of england and my border is in semi shade).
How large a border, need measurements. After clearing I would till in lots of organic matter (compost) and then lay down a couple inches of organic mulch (shredded pine bark). Come spring rototill again and add more organic matter, then plant. What to plant really depends on the physical size of the border.
It also HEAVILY depends on choosing plants that can handle .border in "semi-shade" .
Dunchutch, you said you pulled up what you could. How much is left, and how invasive is it? You don't want to end up re-pulling the same stuff. If you have no "moral"objections to using something like Roundup, you might be able to kill everything, or most everythingl If you choose to employ Roundup or something like it, read the instructions CAREFULLY, noting, inter alia, that you have to water before you apply the stuff, precisely to encourage growth that you will then kill. These substances operate through the leaves.
If, OTOH, you are able to mobilize some muscle, you might be able to dig up down to the roots.
As Brooklyn has pointed out, much also depends on size of your plot. Tell us that, and also approx # of hours of (semi) sunlight area gets, in winter and summer.
There are lot of plants that are inexpensive, easy to care and easy to grow. Do your own *'flower gardening'
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* and plant Flowering plants, ferns and foliage plants make a wonderful border. If you want to start your garden in the springtime, then I would strongly consider buying seeds and start them indoors. There are many great plants that grow readily from seed, som blooming in as little as
40-50days. You can plant Bleeding heart, crocus, grape hyacinth, hosta, primrose and wax begonia. These plants grows well in shaded area.
We already know that, the OP indicated that he already knows that too, see his last two words. DUH
There are plenty of plants that thrive in semi shade, that's the LEAST important consideration. But first and foremost one needs to know the size of the space so to chose plants with growing habits to match... a border can be 6" wide, 50'+ wide, and everything inbetween. There is no point to suggest planting understory trees in a 2' wide border, especially if up against a structure. And most plants do well in partial shade/partial sun regardless what the horticultural tag indicates. I maintain a border between me and my neighbors that's a
40'-60' wide hedgerow that's more than 2,000' long, consists of various size trees, many more than 60', 70', even 80' tall, many small trees, shrubs of all sizes, grasses, vines, and whatever plants take up residence, roses, ferns, mosses, lichens, more plants than I can list here. And I do maintain it, section by section as time and weather permit, mostly trimming with machete and loppers but I also remove a lot of undesirable plants and put in a lot of new plants, many are volunteer plants I find elsewhere about my property growing where they don't belong, many are too valuable to pluck and toss so I carefully move them to a better home, over this past summer I must have moved about fifty conifer seedlings of various types from my flower beds to my hedgerow. On a small property with a relatively small border (which is what I suspect in this case) it's far more important to know the precise size/placement of that border, or substantial money can be wasted that the poster indicates he hasn't much of.
Bleeding heart really requires full sun to flower properly but it is also quite invasive, I'd not plant that in a relatively small border. Bleeding heart does best growing at the edges of a woodlot, if there are no deer. I keep one large bleeding heart planted in a fenced bed near my humming bird feeders. For a small border on a small property I'd be more inclined to plant dwarf rock garden conifers leaving some space for planting flowering annuals during warm weather or placing pots of annuals. Conifers will add a lot more interest in winter. Various naturalized bulbs will add color in spring. I would strongly suggest resisting crowding in too many plants, they grow... they will look puny at the nursery but after a couple three years growth you'll be contemplating which to yank out.
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