48 plants

P (from D&P fame) came to help me today plan my new flower beds. We spent lots of time talking about what I wanted and looking up plans and nearly missed the garden centre being open.

But I now have 48 little babies that are just waiting to be planted. P has placed them out so I'll be busy doing that tomorrow.

He also helped me move the shrubs around a bit as well and confirmed that the lavetera is dead. So this evening I chopped that right back to the stump. I also got to ask him several more "plant or weed" questions and so was able to pull a lot of weeds up.

So I now know that the three shrubs I have are:
1) Choisya ternata - Mexican orange blossom. This makes a really nice smell when you knock against it. There was a little one of these as well which we've moved to go between the two parts of the big flower bed.
2) photina - red robin. This is the shrub in the middle which currently has lovely red leaves. There is also one opposite which used to be smothered by the lavetera. It looks a bit straggly at the moment but might thrive now the lavetera is cut back.
3) pieris - this we moved to in front of the Photina. there are also 2 small ones which we've put in the opposite bed.

The pretty shrub that was between the Choisya and the photina with the papery leaves looks a bit dead now. The landscapers moved it forward but it wasn't looking very healthy today. It turns out its not got many roots that's why. So we moved it to over by the gap left by the christmas tree and I gave it a light prune to make it a little less top heavy. We did find out what it was as we were moving it - but I've forgotten and not written it down. I'll look tomorrow.

So here are the flowers that are going in the new beds:

HOT BED
Helenium "the bishop"
Kniphofa - royal castle and red hot poker
Rudbeckia
Oriental poppies
Lupins - gallery red
Coreopis
Daliha tubers

PINK / COTTAGE BED
Cistus Corbariensis
Rose - Graham Thomas
Geranium - himalayene Gravetyre
Campanula
Foxglove
Aquilegia - rose barlow
Lupin
Cistus Hibridus
Penstomon
Delphinium
Cistus Decumber "sun rose"
Coreopis - american dream
Pinks
Fennel
plus the alliums that are already there
plus I've 3 iris bulbs

Camera is away again so no pics for now.