Steve Edney

Steve Edney - How to Create a Herbaceous Border

Saturday 4th February 2023 at Monks Eleigh Village Hall

The first EAGG meeting of 2023 saw a really good turnout of members and lots of welcome guests for Steve Edney’s well-received talk on starting a herbaceous border.

Steve was head gardener at The Salutation in Kent for 17 years, before Covid hit and they parted ways in January 2019.  Together with his talented partner Lou Dowle, they took this opportunity to establish the No Name Nursery, which they are stocking from a new three acre garden they have created from a local field. In the same year they won a gold medal at Chelsea and Best in Show at Hampton Court, and Lou won a local “best wild life garden award” for their own garden. 

Lou has impeccable sustainability credentials and everything on site is recycled, including a home-made green waste mulch applied 6 to 8 inches deep to counter water loss, and a bore hole. 

The border of Steve’s talk is 100m x 6m, romantically planted in a limited colour scheme of purple and blues, backed by a purple beach hedge, cut once a year at precisely 7ft - the height Steve can cut it without requiring ladders. For full summer impact the border is not cut back until March, giving plenty of structure year round. Steve described designing in four dimensions. Given a bare site, he uses canes to indicate the depth, horizontal and vertical spread. The fourth dimension is time and he spoke about planting densities here, preferring to thin as plants grew rather than having a lot of bare earth. All the plants were grown on site by seed, cuttings or propagation. 

Year one calls for discipline and ruthlessness as the site is fenced and hedges planted, soil prepared and weeds controlled. The rule is that weeds can be tolerated but must never be allowed to seed. Year two was about changing what isn’t working. Steve and Lou keep rigorous records for all 400 plus varieties they’ve used to help judge what measures to take and when. By year three the long border was looking astonishingly well-assembled and established. I look forward to hearing what happens next.

Sally Long

EAGG Member

Steve Edney's Long Border plant list EAGG talk 4th February 2023

 Top 5 grasses

Poa libillardierei

Miscanthus Poseidon

Dechampsia cespitosa Goldtau

Top 5 early summer perennials

Nepeta Junior Walker

Geranium Sirak

Iris x robusta Dark Aura 

Baptisia Pink Truffles

Salvia nemerosa Jan Spruyt

Stipa gigantea Gold Fontaene 

Stipa Calamagrostis Lemperg

Top 5 late flowering perennials

Persicaria Janet

Sanguisorba Nettlesworth Wand

Aster Pink Buttons

Sedum Purple Emperor

Vernonia lettermanii

 Top 5 long flowering perennials

Nepeta Amelia

Osteospermum jucundum

Phuopsis stylisation Purpurea

Geranium Terre Franche

Penstemon Garnet

 Top 5 shrubs

Anesidontea El Royo

Indigofera heterantha

Sambucus Milk Chocolate

Rosa Bengal Crimson

Pittosporum Wrinkled Blue

 Top 5 drought tolerant plants 

Erodium manescavii

Allium senescens sub sp glaucum 

Oraganum Marchants seedling

Centaurea delbata Steenbergii

Calamintha nepetafolia Gottfried Khon

 Top 5 Seed heads

Serratula tinctoria subsp seoanei

Orzopsis mileacea

Miscanthus Rossi

Glycyrrhiza yunnanensis 

Eryngium agavefolium