My first season in this garden was the summer of 2012. It was a summer of misery as I watched some of my new plantings being destroyed by voles, forcing me to the annoying option of planting things in wire baskets. The second summer, 2013, it was box blight and chafer grubs that had me weeping on my way up the garden path.
But this year, I'm pleased to say, I finally feel that my little plot is beginning to look like a garden. Let's just hope I don't now have to move on again, as I've had to do so often in the past. (FYI - the wire baskets are almost a distant memory!)
The colour in the Rose Walk is mostly achieved at the moment with Verbena bonariensis and the grey foliage and purple-blue flowers of Nepeta 'Six Hills Giant', which has been cut back and reflowered three times in the course of the summer. The bronze fennels are also growing, and flowering, out of their third haircut - seems to be a good way to manage them. I've hopes for the purples and reds of penstemons in future autumns, but at the moment the work of tender perennials is proving to much for me. Give me a couple of years.