A promise yet to be fulfilled [05/25]

I’m Nathan Langley and this is A promise yet to be fulfilled, a seasonal weekly newsletter on my garden developments at home in Sudbury, Ontario!

I am happy to report that the soil has been a bit more amenable this week. There was even a significant rainfall Saturday morning, which means I am off the hook for watering until this evening (wonderful!).

On the progress front, I have been working on two things: (1) extending the perennial garden bed to surround one side of the trial garden, and (2) adding more perennials to the trial garden area.

It is easy to ignore it when you are making a garden, but a nice, traditional, dug edge makes all the difference in separating a space from surrounding turf. Those black plastic edges you can buy at big box stores look ok for the first year or so, but they don’t really work at keeping the turf from invading your bed. More importantly, they don’t create the same feeling of separation.

Yes, you need to recut the dug edges at least once a year. But I believe that bit of extra effort is worth it!

In the trial garden, I added a few more perennials to fill in the open space I created previously. I haven’t had a chance to expand the open area this week, but plan to work on that coming up.

I’m also going to measure out the new section of the perennial garden I put an edge on, and will have a look at the leftover perennials from my online store to see what would work well in that space. I’ve already added more Eupatorium maculatum ‘Gateway’ around the old well cap, but there is still a large open section to fill.