Europe's shortest herbaceous border

Hours spent gardening: 6
Plants purchased: 0
Hours awake all night coughing: 12 (have man 'flu)
Plants divided: 7
Bulbs planted: 254
Sycamore leaves collected: 5231

It's that time of year when gardeners go dormant like perennials and ease themselves into an armchair with a pile of seed catalogues to hand.  I had been planning to redesign the back bed (formerly known as the veg patch) and suddenly realised we were cruising towards late November without having given it a second thought.  The original plan had been to recreate something inspired by a visit to The Broadwalk Herbaceous Border at Hampton Court last year (Europe's longest herbaceous border at 580 metres).  I've been dreaming all year about foxgloves and irises interspersed with allium heads nodding in the breeze, the whole thing held together by silver foliage and towers of sweet peas ready to burst into bloom.  You know the kind of thing I mean.  As I type this, I realise how ludicrous this is given that the border I am dealing with is 2 metres long and partially in shade.  It seems logical to call it The Short Border from now on.  Since my original plans, the recession has put a damper on frivolous spending habits in London's chi-chi garden centres.  This could actually be a good thing in my horticultural evolution.  I can see from other blogs that real gardeners are busy propagating, taking cuttings, growing things from seed and making everything go further with plant division.  Only city types are whiling away Sundays in the plant equivalent of Harvey Nichols, where the customers think that agastache are people who make 'eyewear' and compost is a nightclub on the Dalston fringe.  Times are hard and I will just have to grow my own.

The Broadwalk Border, Hampton Court Palace.  Taken in May (obviously)

Irises at Hampton Court, something to aspire to

A close up of those alliums

Unfortunately, what was missing from the new thrifty revolution was planning.  I've read the books on planting plans.  I've got a little compass in order to draw the expected diameter of plants, bought the plant encyclopaedia with what goes where and even have an app so that you can point your ipad around the garden and it will tell you what to plant.  So did I make a planting plan?  Reader, I did not.

What actually happened was this.  In the midst of some carefully planned bulb planting activity, I realised winter was almost upon us and I must act now if the Short Border was to be anything in time for next year.  A selection of random bulbs went in following by some foxglove seedlings that had, as usual, been neglected and were bursting out of their posts.  Some had to be discarded due to a coating of white mold.  Then came a frenzy of plant division reminiscent of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre.  (Things were not helped by the fact that Le Photographe has broken my spade.)  A geranium phaeum was torn into pieces, a hosta Frances Williams pulled apart and stuffed carelessly in the most slug prone part of the garden. A grass was ripped into shreds leaving blades of grass scattered as if attacked by a combine harvester.   A mixed pack of iris bulbs were poked in in an unpredictable rash of colours including yellow (normally banned from my colour pallet, daffodils excepted) and alliums went into the shade without a thought as to whether they could actually grow.  A lack of markers has rendered the bulbs vulnerable to the reckless and over enthusiastic gardener who is prone to going in and digging up areas she has forgotten have been planted.  Squirrels, foxes and cats roam on the area, routing for bulbs or simply welcoming the open and freshly turned ground to be used as their personal toileting area or as a dining area for those who believe bulbs are edible.

Images of The Short Border are available but are unsuitable for readers under 18.

Cyclamens and Cineraria, Hackney November 2012