Garden Bears' World - Brightening up the Front Garden

Last month, I helped Polar to redesign the bottom flowerbed in the front garden, which is closest to the living room window.  We wanted to make sure there were some pretty flowers and interesting foliage to see all year round in what can be quite a bare bed at the moment.

Polar had made a start by moving two big plants that weren't happy there - a big fern that needed more space and a peony that needs more sunshine - so there were two big holes ready for us to plant into.

Before we started planting, we placed the new plants in their pots where we thought they would look nice, and shuffled them around until we were happy with how they looked.

We planted the three pale-leaved bergenia plants in a cluster close to the edge of the bed, in the big hole where the dull fern had been.  Then we planted the dark-leaved bergenia where the peony had been, on the other side of the bed where it would get a little more light.

The little skimmia shrub went in the middle of the bed.  It is very small now and won't grow very quickly, but it has such nice glossy foliage and frothy flower spikes I think it will look super.

We planted a group of three evergreen ferns on the left-side of the bed where there are already some clumps of snowdrops, a bright lime-green heuchera and a pretty bi-coloured hellebore.

Finally, Polar lifted some more snowdrops from crowded clumps in the back garden and brought them round to the front, to place in between our new plants.

The snowdrops have almost finished flowering now but our other plants are all settling in well.  While they are quite small, Polar and I might cheat and push some dogwood stems into the ground between them for some extra colour and height.  There are some growing on the roundabout at the southern end of the village, so she's planning to pay a visit with her secateurs very soon!