Bog Garden

Bog and waterside plants tend to be big, often with dramatic shapes and with vibrant flower colours. Have a go with bog plants, but choose the right ones in the first place. Given the right conditions, most moisture loving perennials grown in the border will thrive with their feet in soggy soil. To create a bog garden. use your natural conditions, if possible: Soil that holds water well, and if it suffers regular flooding, so much the better. You can of course artificially create a bog garden with a liner or even add one to the side of an existing pond.

If you have only a small area, choose your plants wisely as many moisture lovers grow huge, such as Gunnera manicata, which produces leaves five foot or more across. If you only have a small area for a bog garden, use plants like hostas, kingcup (Caltha palustris) and sedges. One plant that is a must is astilbe, a gorgeous plant with plumes of feathery blooms and deep red flowers in summer. Astilbes will readily self seed. Hostas are another must, especially the blue 'Halcyon.' Then there’s Eupatorium cannabinum 'Flore Pleno' or double hemp agrimony. This one has heads of purple-mauve flowers on red tinted stems between June and October. It will grow in both sunny and partially shaded areas of the bog garden, to 4 feet tall with a spread of 3 feet. It has this Latin name because the leaves make it look like cannabis. Another plant that can be grown in sun or shade as long as it stays in the damp is Ligularia dentata ‘Desdemona,' which produces large, kidney-shaped coppery-green leaves with rich purple undersides. Spikes of daisy-like orange flowers are formed on branching stems in late summer. Plants can be divided in spring or seed sown in autumn. It is a clump-forming perennial growing to 4 feet with a spread of 2 feet.

I think one of the best is Lobelia cardinalis, an upright plant with purple-tinged glossy foliage and brilliant red flowers forming tall spikes on top of plants growing 3 feet tall and 10 inches across. Seeds can be sown in spring and plants can be divided in late winter and early spring. Protect the new growth against slug and snail damage. The yellow skunk cabbage has wonderful flowers, but as the name suggests, the smell is pretty unpleasant. The plant mentioned earlier, the Gunnera, the giant or prickly rhubarb plant, has light green flower spikes in summer, which are followed by orange-brown seedpods. Finally, candelabra primulas like boggy conditions and will self seed, producing plants of many shades.