Layers of growth in the garden

Being on a hill means vertical gardening of a sort comes naturally at the Boggy Brae. Looking up the garden in a more or less westerly direction gives this view.

Starting at the bottom layer there is the small 'umbrella' willow, its lower leaves eaten off by roe deer; to its right a pieris and the rhododendron I've called Pale Pink Glory which, as you can see, is past its best glory– sic transit gloria mundi. Between the pieris and Pale Pink is a lemon-scented fern (Oreopteris limbosperma). In front of that – properly the first layer, I suppose – is pignut. Of course. :)

The next layer is less easy to distinguish to the unpractised eye. My eye is practised. Leftmost is some of the ancient apple tree, then an escallonia behind the pieris, and the mauve-flowered Rhodoendron ponticum whose roots are actually in our neighbour's gadren. The blue thing below it is a tarpaulin over a wood pile.

Above the apple tree is a large goat willow with a honeysuckle bedecked holly tree growing close beside it.

Right at the top, up the hill beyond our garden is a birch tree, some kind of conifer standing tall and alone, and a massive old beech tree by the burn. That tree is probably where all my beech seedlings have come from. I guess last autumn was a good one for beech mast.

Lower down, just behind the house, is the retaining wall at the back of the back terrace. The corner by the old ship's companionway steps (boat builders used to live in this house) has layers too.

At the bottom is a good bunch of Common Haircap Moss (Polytrichum commune). This is just getting back to its former glory, recovering from the depradations of a pair of geese we had some years ago. Unusually it is quite dry in the photo because we've had four dry warm days. Yesterday got back to 'normal' and it has rained all night from late afternoon.

Growing above it are ferns, mostly Lady Fern (Athyrium filix-femina), including what I believe is a naturally occurring red-stemmed variety of which there are quite a few on the Boggy Brae. To the left of the ferns, though difficult to see in this pic is a clump of roseroot. There is an even bigger clump to the left of that. Above the ferns are chives and just above the chives, just beginning to flower, some blue irises.

In among the chives is an irrepressible rose – the semi-wild kind that do so well here – which keeps trying to grow across the steps. I've been hacking it back each year but decided on a change of hack, sorry, tack this year and recently pegged back a young stem with a strong tent peg and will continue to do this as it grows in an attempt to train it the other way.

Purple layers

Up a little again, towards the shed, there is another unplanned layering of creeping buttercups, red campion, alkanet, and ox-eye daisies, with the first two African daisies just showing to the right. Above them all is the ubiquitous pignut in the grass. When the ox-eye daisies open (soon!) the alkanet will not be visible from this viewpoint as it is behind.