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Fruit Avenue – Version 2

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Of all the areas in the garden, Fruit avenue is the one I’m least pleased with. It’s always weed-choked, has miles of edging to maintain, has out-of-control-and-never-fruiting fruit trees, currant bushes that serve the birds first and gooseberries that need eternal vigilance from sawfly. Oh – and raspberries that make such a feeble attempt at growing and fruiting, I don’t know why they bother.

The original idea for this 16-metre long border was for it to be filled with all manner of soft fruit trees, bushes and vines that would lip-smack and delight. It would have plants so dense and fruits so abundant, I would have to shovel the windfall off the ground just to mow the grass.

Unfortunately, the reality has been very different. There have been a whole litany of problems with this border that I won’t bore you with, but suffice to say that the more disillusioned I got with the performance of this border, the more I ignored it – hoping that somehow it would just magically sort itself out.

Magic didn’t sort the border out, but the full glare of my attention did.

The weeds were so bad that I “scalped” the border, using a hoe to remove the top centimetre of moss, weeds and mould that had formed a sickly green crust on top.

The front line against weeds advancing to the left

At the far end of the border, I planted astilbe alongside the hostas to grow, spread and cover the ground, preventing weeds from getting a foot-hold and binding the soil together.

I will probably regret it, but two elderberry bushes were also planted, closely together. One is a black elder, the other is golden and I’m hoping the two will play nice and their foliage contrast well against each other.

Astilbe at the border’s end

The main problem with the border is the lack of ground cover. All along the length of the border are raspberries but they’re hardly known for their ability to smother weeds.

In order to flesh out the border more, I planted bergenias, Japanese anemones and vinca minor (is there a vinca major?). They’re only small, isolated pockets of plants now, but I am hoping that within a few years, they will have spread and covered the ground, stopping weeds from getting a foothold.

Japanese anemone in freshly-weeded ground

The “understorey” of ground-cover plants should be low enough to let the raspberries grow un-impeded above them. Where I have shrubs like the gooseberries, which don’t grow as tall, I’ve used Pachysandra Terminalis to start covering the ground underneath.

Low-height ground-cover for under small shrubs

It is evergreen and looks distinctly uninspiring, but I think a large swathe of these (when they grow, spread and eventually knit together) will create a backdrop, punctuated here and there by the shrubs above them.

The wooden supports for the blackcurrant rotted last year and so I replaced them with thicker wooden tree stakes. The vine grows phenomenally fast with metres of growth in the horticultural blink of an eye. It’s been difficult to keep it under control but I have given it some TLC and it has rewarded me with masses of fruit that are gradually ripening, ready for the birds.

Not-ready-yet blackberries, for the birds

Maintaining the border edging remains a tedious chore, but there’s nothing much I can do to shorten the amount there is without something drastic (such as installing tremendously expensive metal edging). This is just going to be one of those jobs that need doing once or twice a year. This year was catch-up with the edging as I can’t remember having done it last year. The results are very satisfying to my OCD.

Border edge that runs to infinity, and beyond

Towards the bulbous end of Fruit Avenue was a stand of Russell lupins. These became so infested with aphids and looked so hideous and disfigured that the whole lot was taken out, leaving large gap and for the first time, a way to get across the border over the soil. At the moment the plan is to fill the gap with Gallery Lupins (a favourite from the previous garden), as I miss those technicolour spires abuzz with bees.

Mind the gap between the soil and the border edge

There’s a large stand of Iris Sibirica that smothered and killed one blueberry bush and is threatening to do the same with the other two. It has to come out and the gap it opens up will have more gooseberries that will come from the self-layered offsets from the original.

Iris sibirica – to be removed and given to “friends”

The first piece of work in “reclaiming” Fruit Avenue was the summer pruning of the fruit trees to try and get them down to size. The prune was severe, reducing the height to almost half. This let in much more light to the plants underneath (mainly weeds).

While this pruning, and the rest of the work above, is essentially border maintenance, the extensive renovation on this border almost feels like the whole thing is being planted again. Many ferns have also been added, along with many cheap-buys from the supermarket.

In some ways there were never enough plants in Fruit Avenue to create a self-weeding border, and I was too chicken to prune the fruit trees. I created the problems by racing to start a new area in the garden before sanity-checking Fruit Avenue to see if there was enough cover and to have a maintenance plan for the fruit (namely pruning).

This is changing and recently, the number of plants in the border have more than doubled. I’m hoping that – particularly with the ground cover – the border becomes just as quick and easy to weed as the others.

I’m also hoping that the birds will finally let us have some of the fruit as a reward for maintaining the border – perhaps that will come with Fruit Avenue – Version 3.

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Sunil Patel

I'm Sunil Patel, this is me. I created the Garden at 13 Broom Acres and I open it to visitors. I also bake and write blog posts giving a "behind the scenes" look into what it's like to maintain such a garden.

Visit the blog, then come and visit the garden. We can have a good sit-down, a jolly chinwag and a relaxing cup of tea with a sinfully generous slice of home made cake.

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6 comments

Susan Maclean 27/08/2019 - 7:58 am

Morning Sunil! I think you have made a good decision to underplant the fruit trees and bushes. I can see that the bare soil is not only weedy but mossy…. perhaps that end is a bit too damp for it’s own good? No reason why fruit and flowers cannot live happily together – I planted 4 tomato plants in my yellow and white border (which is now full of orange/dark yellow because I am attempting BIG autumn colour!!) and boy! did they repay the £1.20 per plant! I wish I had started a record of wieght when I started to harvest. They are yellow “baby” toms, which can go into a salad without cutting, thus protecting the flavour (I heard a scientist once on the radio saying that once cut, the tomato flavour fades away and I think that’s right, I never made tomato sandwiches after that). Well, even pinching out the tops after they got to about two foot high didn’t stop them……they just grew out from the sides; truss after truss ripens, and I haven’t bought a tomato for a couple of months and they are still coming! Tomato tart for supper tonight methinks.

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Sunil 31/08/2019 - 8:37 pm

Hello Mrs Mac, I definitely have to underplant, otherwise all that I will be harvesting is weeds. I’m happy for the success of your tomatoes! You’ll be making your own ketchup just to get through them all! I was wondering about strawberries in Fruit Avenue, but I’m not sure if it will turn out too shady for them. I can always try with a few plants.

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Jayne 27/08/2019 - 5:50 pm

Your tenacity is to be admired! I was in Taos NM tending my son and wife’s garden for a couple weeks. They have 5 fruit trees to tend along the side of a field/lawn. Watering them was easy but when the grasshoppers arrived!!!! Oh my…that was a battle! ALmost lost one new cherry, but I think it is safe to say when I left, all were alive and well!

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Sunil 31/08/2019 - 8:32 pm

Hello Jayne, well done on keeping the trees alive! I’m certain ours will stay alive, it’s just getting the darn things to fruit that’s the challenge!

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gardeninacity 31/08/2019 - 1:20 am

I think your approach makes a lot of sense. I like the mix of hosta and astilbe with elderberry.

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Sunil 31/08/2019 - 8:30 pm

Thanks, Jason, the hosta is getting eaten by slugs so we’ll have to see if they stay there or eventually fade. The elderberry bushes are still small but should take off next year (I think they’re only had one season so far). I’m hoping there’s far less maintenance needed with this border in future!

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