Success with tricky spots

Yes, you can grow well in difficult situations

- Ruth Hayes

I DOUBT there is a garden anywhere in the world that doesn’t have a ‘tricky area’ or two that either needs extra care, thoughtful planting or, indeed, regularly ejects whatever plants the gardener tries to cultivate there.

Some gardens are easy to cultivate, blessed with rich, loamy soil that is welcoming to whatever varieties put down roots there, but most of us have to contend with tricky spots that require a little more hard graft to make them pleasingly productive.

Our garden is a prime example of this. At the moment it is a riot of alliums, poppies, geums and knapweed, but the soil is terribly thin and chalky so each autumn and spring we have to dig in industrial amounts of compost and well-rotted manure in an effort to give it some substance.