Musical Plants

Last summer, as I looked at my maturing fence border, I observed that the finished planting was not as pleasing in actuality as it had been in theory, and I began to make plans for revising it. (See Fence Border, Second Draft.) I was unhappy with the way that the colors in this flower bed worked with those of the neighboring blue and yellow border, and I was dissatisfied with the position of two endressii-type hardy geraniums within the border. My planned changes involved moving some plants around and adding more blue flowers. I began the revisions right away by inserting two new blue-flowered plants (a clematis and a veronica), but moving existing plants around needed to wait until spring.

I took advantage of a cool, dry day on Sunday to get this exterior redecorating task done. The job was a complicated one because one plant had to be moved from the fence border to the circular bed and three had to exchange locations within the fence border; and all of these plants had grown into large unwieldy clumps since last year. Getting all the plants from their present locations to their new ones required a carefully choreographed performance of musical plants.

I began by preparing the circular bed to receive a large clump of  Geranium endressii ‘Wargrave Pink’ (in a space once occupied by a Geranium x ‘Johnson’s Blue’ that had dwindled away almost to nothing). Although I had cleaned up and weeded all my flower beds in April, I had missed a lot. With plants fully leafed out but not yet blooming, it was easy to see where wild strawberries and grasses had insinuated themselves among the Geranium x cantabrigiense plants (note the three-lobed strawberry leaves among the rounded geranium leaves in the lower right of the photo) and where Geranium x cantabrigiense ‘Biokovo’ was encroaching on the space of other plants.

Once I had a new home  prepared for it, the next step was to lift the clump of G. ‘Wargrave Pink’ from the fence border. It was quickly apparent that this plant had grown much too large to fit into the available space in the circular bed, so I divided it. About half was transplanted to the circular bed, and the remainder was potted up to be given away.

With G. ‘Wargrave Pink’ out of the way, I could now lift the clump of lavender Tradescantia that had been growing in front of it and move it into the space vacated by ‘Wargrave Pink.’

Then, an unknown geranium (probably G. endressii) in a bolder shade of pink could be lifted and moved into the space previously occupied by the tradescantia.

Finally, the blue and white Tradescantia ‘Osprey’ was lifted and moved into the space vacated by the geranium, and a newly purchased blue Geranium x ‘Brookside’ was planted in place of T. ‘Osprey.’

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The whole process took several hours; and by the time I finished, I was worn out and my relocated plants were looking a bit bedraggled. I would have preferred to move these plants earlier in their growth cycle, but the early spring changed my plans; I could either transplant them under less than ideal conditions or wait until next year. Fortunately, these are all plants that do well in my garden – mostly volunteer seedlings or divisions of divisions. In other words, these are plants I can afford to risk losing. But I think that if I keep them well watered for the next week or so while they settle in, they’ll do just fine.

Here’s hoping that when I look at this flower bed this summer, I’ll be happier with what I see.