Neat planting holes? Or graves?

There are times when I think that I am not as bright as I think I am....

Have you ever finished doing a task in a garden, looked back, and realised that you've made a bit of a blunder?

You know the sort of thing - where you start pruning out dead wood from a shrub then realise there isn't much of it left... (don't look at me like that, we've all done it!)  or where you do the annual prune of something like Dogwood, which needs a firm hand, only to discover that now, the neighbours can see into the garden...or you can see past it to the scruffy compost pens...

Well, I was doing an early-season tidy-up the other day, and as Mr Client was giving the grass the first cut of the year, I followed round with the edgers and tidied up the many planting holes.

Hmmm.

That ain't pretty. The holes are too small, in the further ones: they are not in line with each other, or the path, or anything at all - it's all a bit of a mess.

In fact, it looks almost as though Time Team have been doing exploratory trenches, doesn't it?

Oops!

Perhaps I should suggest that we change the planting holes into nicely rounded ovals, instead of rectangles?

Ah, but Mr Client likes the straight edges, because it's easier to mow along them, than to manoeuvre the mower around and between them.

Or perhaps I should revive my suggestion from two years ago, that we extend the rather narrow shingle path, and create a shingled area, to include all these roses, in their planting holes.

That way, the path will be a lot wider, Mr Client won't have to mow between the roses (which is easy enough at this time of year, but gets very scratchy later in the season) and I'll be able to walk all round the roses to prune them, without having to watch where I put my feet.

All I'll have to do is mark out a nice curving edge to the lawn, on "this" side of the planting holes: lift up the turf, make a firm edging of stones (plenty of those in the garden!) lay down some membrane, shovel a couple of tons of shingle over it, and there it is, done.

Yup, I think that will be my suggestion - widen the path, shingle all around the roses, and no more graves!

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