The plants

Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria)

I’m a little ashamed by the crudeness of the plant selection process: multiple visits to the nurseries where I’ve grabbed anything labelled as “native” and thrown it in a pot. I’ve then scattered meadow flower seeds on top to fill any gaps. I have a few pots that I planted with mixed seeds - one that’s a meadow mix dominated by clover - much to the delight of the bees, the other is a hedgerow grass mix.

I don’t yet know the plants, but hope to learn about them over the months and years.

We’ve three clay bowls of meadow flowers, dominated by clovers.

The terrace is west-facing. It’s long and thin, so most of the plants get roughly the same amount of light, with the sun coming in around 1pm. There’s a slither of north-facing shade, and as the trees, shrubs and hedge grow we’ll likely get more shade.

The “shade garden” on the north facing wall has five ferns - royal fern (Osmunda regalis), soft shield fern (Polystichum setiferum), hard fern (Blechnum spicant), hart's-tongue fern (Asplenium scolopendrium), and maidenhair spleewort (Asplenium trichomanes). The latter two can’t be seen in this photo.

The herb garden which, needless-to-say, is mostly non-natives.

We have many pots of mixed grasses like this. They were from a hedgerow seed mix from the nursery, Naturescape.

Right now, the terrace looks like this - it’s a little scruffy! It should look less so when the trees, shrubs and hedge grow and give it a bit of structure (holly, yew, box, bay, privet, and burnet rose).