The Acer Bank

This is a bank with a very poor covering of soil, close to the pond. It had been used to dump broken pottery decades ago, and we were not sure whether anything would grow. To our surprise, the tiny japanese acers we put in and all flourished, to the extent that we had to thin some out and prune others to keep them within bounds. It may be that this spot suits them because it is so sheltered, open only to the west. we have experimented with various wild flower mixtures underneath the acers, finding most of them too vigorous and are now working on a mixture of bugle, geranium nodosum, epimedium and pulmonaria.