Gardening Services Close to You in Notting Hill

A border in a W11 garden is looked down on at least as often as it is walked past. Houses on these terraces put the principal rooms a storey above the garden, so the planting below is read as a plan rather than as an elevation, and every gap, every flopped clump and every patch of bare earth is obvious from the window. That sets a different brief for a herbaceous border: not one spectacular fortnight in June, but continuous cover and a shape that still works in March and in November.

Support belongs in the ground before it is needed

Staking is done in April and May, while the plants are ankle high and it feels premature, so that growth comes up through the support and hides it. Ring stakes for peonies and heavy asters, pea sticks pushed in among looser perennials, and a grow-through mesh for anything that habitually collapses all disappear within weeks. A clump tied up after it has already gone over never recovers its shape and looks tied up for the rest of the season. Comparable gardens on the next set of streets are covered by our specialists in the area.

The midsummer cut that buys a later season

Cutting sedum, phlox, helenium and the taller asters back by roughly a third in late spring produces shorter, sturdier plants that flower a fortnight or so later and need no staking at all. Doing it to half a clump and leaving the other half untouched stretches the flowering of that plant across several weeks. Hardy geraniums and alchemilla are treated more brutally: sheared to the ground once the first flush is over, watered, and fresh mounds of foliage follow within a month. Deadheading through the summer is the rest of it, and in a garden overlooked from above it is what keeps the bed from looking spent by August.

When a border is cut down, and how much

Cutting everything to the ground in October leaves five months of bare soil in a space that is on view every day, and it throws away the frosted seed heads, the hollow stems in which a great deal of insect life overwinters, and the structure that keeps a small garden from looking abandoned. What actually comes out in autumn is the material that has collapsed into a wet mass, since that rots the crown beneath it. The rest is left standing and cut in late winter, before the new growth is high enough to be damaged in the process.

Dividing what has stopped performing

Most perennials lose vigour after three to five years, and the giveaway is a clump that flowers round its edges with a bare, woody middle. Lifting it, prising it apart with two forks back to back and replanting only the young outer sections restores it completely. Divisions surplus to the bed pot up easily, and when a household is moving those pots travel with the rest of the load, which is the sort of thing removals prices in Holland Park takes in its stride.

Old soil at the foot of an old wall

Borders in these gardens have often held the same planting for decades, and the soil shows it: tired, laced with roots, and dry along the wall where the rain shadow keeps it from ever wetting properly. Deep digging is not the answer among established perennials. An annual mulch of composted material laid over damp soil in early spring rebuilds structure without disturbance. Soil splashed onto a stone or tiled path during that work washes off; the ingrained algal staining underneath it is a different job, handled by what the visit includes.

What eats a sheltered border

An enclosed garden with walls on three sides is warm, damp and almost windless, which suits slugs and snails perfectly and makes hostas and delphiniums a losing proposition unless they are protected from the moment the shoots appear. Dense evergreen cover taken right up to a house wall is a different concern, since it gives a covered run to air bricks and basement openings, and evidence of use is referred to experienced pest control services in Notting Hill.

How border work is scheduled

Borders want several short visits a year rather than one long one, keyed to the plants: staking in mid spring, the reduction cut in late spring, deadheading and tying through summer, a selective clear in autumn and the main cut in late winter. Visits are charged by their length, with division and replanting quoted as separate pieces of work. A note or a few photographs taken while the border is in flower is far more useful than trying to identify bare crowns in February. The wider maintenance arrangement this belongs to is described at nationwide garden maintenance services.