Smoke Bush bed finished

I've had a lovely day in the garden today. Firstly, and main thing - the Smoke Bush bed is under control - that hasn't happened for years!!! And just in time for all the bulbs to come up - through the Lucerne (in the USA it alfalfa). Now it looks like this:

I even have a slightly larger picture HERE

And it was nice to have "H" call in while I was doing it - she is just as keen a gardener as I am (if not more), and actually reads this blog (waving to H - you forgot the Swan plant seeds). It was exciting to me to talk to someone who actually reads the blog!!!!

And H has taken home some of the salvia from this bed - I don't know which one it is (there must be millions of salvias), but it is dark blue, perennial and forms hard, woody tubers underground. Any ideas, anyone????

So, this has all caused me to think a little more about Garden documentation. I am enjoying having a craft journal (ie book), and have used a garden journal on and off over the years. But it doesn't really suit what I want to do, being commercial, and divided int o months. I want to draw squiggles with where particular bulbs/irises etc are.

I have a number of loose sheets in a drop file. But I think I need a blank book, and to write in that.

In the meantime, I have done a really rough sketch map in case anyone is really following this blog (and doesn't know my garden, like H does). Because Alice got me thinking the other day with her comment about not having any beds she can walk right around. And my front garden (and kitchen garden) is exactly the opposite.

The front garden is a number of beds right along the front, sort of influenced by knot gardens - but much simpler. In other words - two round beds and three interlocking beds.

This is a very small plan of the front:

There is a very much larger plan HERE

The Smoke Bush bed, where I have just finished, is at the extreme left in this plan.

I think I chose my plan as a way of putting in plants, rather than an overall design - mine is a plantsman's (or plantswoman's) garden - where it is a venue for growing interesting plants - not necessarily a place where the overall design is more important than the opportunity to grow interesting things.

(Or, a place where you need to find a space to fit in any interesting plant - the ability to grow it is more important than how it will impact on the overall garden design).

But having said that - one of the other deign influences was to try and get a band of vegetation across the front that might cut down a bit of dust from the increasingly busy gravel street out the front.

Now - must think more about the Journal. One day. I am going to leave my garden, whether with or without notice. It would be nice to think that whoever takes it on will love it as much as I do - and that they have some idea about what is planted where, and where it came from.

and

PS for today - I have found some labels (which makes me think more about documentation). My most recent Smoke Bush is "Golden Spirit" Cotinus (C. coggygria 'Ancot'), and the one I have had for two years is Cotinus 'Grace" - the purple one. I don't have a label for the ten-years-old one - I think it is just C. coggygria, although 'Viridus' rings a bit of a bell. But anyway - it is green!

And it is in a very nice bed, after today.