A what?
You heard me!
When we first built a banana circle in the front yard almost 15 years ago, we did it by the time honoured method of digging a hole and then mounding up the dirt around it, then filling the hole with organic matter. Due to the incorrect placement of the banana circle, it didn’t work and so had to be transferred to the back yard (where it flourishes today). One of the factors that contributed to its failure was that the mulberry tree provided too much shade for the majority of the year.
As it looked, back in the day!
Since the departure of the bananas, the mounded circle has remained sitting there, not doing much. It has grown a bit of arrowroot and been the receiver of grass clippings but nothing to speak of. I wanted to change that, by turning it into a space for insectary flowers that would help with biodiversity as well as improving the aesthetics. But, would the lack of light stuff that up for me as well?
What I decided to do was to go online plus have a trawl through my books to identify flowering plants that would do well in what was pretty much full shade, just a bit of dappled sun in the morning. Once I had identified a series of thirty six plants that were shade tolerant, I then researched each one using the net and my books to identify any that produced insectary flowers. (the list is accessible here)
What I found out of that thirty six shade lovers were 11 that were also insectary flowers – Cosmos (cosmos bipinnatus); Sweet William (dianthus barbatus); Foxglove (digitalis purpurea); Hellebore (helleborus orientalis); oak leaf and rough leaf Hydrangea (hydrangea sp.); New Guinea Impatiens (impatiens sp); Leopard plant (ligularia); Edging Lobelia (lobelia erinus); Sweet Alyssum (lobularia); Evening Primrose (oenothera biennis) and Native Viola (viola hederacea).
So I went for a recce and found that I was able to get hold of the cosmos, alyssum, viola and lobelia quickly. Which I did and then proceeded to plant them out into the shady mound.
Years ago, I dug in a circle of buried pipe irrigation to allow me to keep things watered, but the seedlings are still pretty small and would not have the root depth to get close enough. So I have been hand watering them and have found that digging a small channel just down the slope from the flowers planted on the inclined part of the mound allows water to soak in rather than run off.
So far things are going well!
