Herbs to flowers

 Our herb garden has evolved, when we moved in this space was decking and in a state, I started popping pots here to cover the messy base, This was back in 2009, we were still sorting the house, so we did not have much time outside. I had a grow bag here as well. 

We decided to remove the decking planks, leaving the frame for a small garden, this was in 2010, we tried for many years to grow things in this space, it was not big enough and it was not a success. Too many cats digging up my veg made us not want to eat anything. 

 I then decided in 2016 to make it into a herb garden, using pot tops to keep the herbs tidy and slate around them, it worked much better, but often I would look at this space the herbs are good, not many plants here, but it was tidy.

It stayed this way for years, but lots of the herbs did not like our clay soil, many died each wet winter, I also have herbs in separate pots as they are too invasive to plant in the ground, these days we hardly pick any of them. This is how it looked before work started.

Firstly I picked off most of the slate, it been added around the acer and Magnolia trees, I removed the membrane, it's not worth keeping, I have dug out the herbs and potted some of them, the rosemary and the garlic both were binned, I took a couple cuttings from the rosemary. The small bay tree is now in a big pot, the bird bath is staying. 

Still loads to do here, I have added more manure and top soil, should now be perfect for planting. I have placed loads of bulbs from my big black tub, these should be OK planted 'in the green' and come back next year, I had a couple forget-me-nots to help fill gaps, a small hellebore as well as some nerines, which I love. There is a buffer zone of slate at the front, helps with plants which flop and the slate links the sections both sides. 

All this because we moved our bench and sit with our morning coffee, looking at this bed, hubby has never enjoyed the herb bed, as I have said before, the garden is never finished, luckily we did not want too many plants, I did get some packs of bulbs and corms, half price, they won't grow this year but will be OK for next, a few packets of seeds, we did get a rose and top soil.