Finally! The slope of weeds is now a slope of perennials.

Earlier this week I spent a couple of evenings distilling my ideas and plant lists into an actual planting plan. I’d been putting this off because it seemed hard. I don’t know much about individual plants. With many of the perennials that seemed most suitable based on my reading, I only had photos to go by – I had no picture in my head of what they actually look like or how large they grow.

I was hoping there would be a tool for this, some nice software package or web site where I enter the size of my planting area, place my plants and then see some rendering of what it might look like. But no – I found nothing of the sort.

So for the first draft I went back to my favourite low-tech tool: sticky notes. A small sticky note measures about 35 by 50 mm, which is not so far from the size of the average perennial, scaled down by 100. I drew our slope on paper, to scale, and then played around with sticky notes representing the various kinds of plants I had in mind. When I was roughly done I looked up each plant’s actual planting distance and drew a prettier and more durable version.

Today we went plant shopping, big time. And then we planted them and now it’s done! It will be very exciting to see whether this turns out anything like I imagine, and how well the plants will thrive.

Well… almost done. There were no Cimicifuga to be found at Ulriksdal, so we’ll have to find those elsewhere. We took all the Aquilegia they had (of the colour that I wanted) and a few of them were barely alive, so I might have to replace those as well.

The planting list, for the record:
Front border: Alchemilla mollis (jättedaggkåpa, pehme kortsleht).
Just behind the Alchemilla, barely visible: Aquilegia “Ruby port” (akleja, aed-kurekell).
Behind those, around the stones: Carex morrowii “Ice Dance” (japansk starr, jaapani tarn).
Behind the Carex: placeholders for the Cimicifuga (höstsilverax, lursslill)
Behind those, nearest the cellar wall: Lamprocapnos spectabilis (löjtnantshjärta, murtudsüda).
Border next to the stairs: Epimedium rubrum (röd sockblomma).
Between the Epimedium and the stones: Astilbe “Rock and Roll”.
Top edge: Hosta fortunei “Aureomarginata”(funkia).
Far corner: Hemerocallis “Frans Hals” (daglilja, päevaliilia).