Ribes and Forsythia are a good pair
coming out in competition every year.
On both sides of the fence they compete
to be the star of our gardens in the street.
My neighbour and I hardly ever see each other, except for a brief greeting when I pass his house while walking my dog, or when we take in parcels for each other. Neither of us spend much time out in the street. However, we have two almost equal sized shrubs that have more than a nodding acquaintance. They live in perfect harmony with each other, sharing the same soil not even six feet apart from each other.
I just love the combination of Ribes and Forsythia and in fact, when I first planted my tiny Ribes in 1988, I planted a tiny Forsythia behind her, six feet away. The two grew in perfect unison, but eventually the Forsythia met her end in the jungle that had developed at the back area of the pond. I couldn’t reach that area and, much to my chagrin, the Forsythia was dug up when the whole of the back area of the garden was excavated in 2014. I had demanded that they preserved the Ribes, so they gave her a good pruning to encourage new growth and left her where she was.
So here we are two years later with the two good neighbours flowering again in unison to brighten our spring gardens. I get the benefit of the view of Mr Next Door’s Forsythia, although I doubt that he gets to see much of my Ribes, as it is hidden from his view from his house.
Little does Mr Next Door know that out in my front garden now flower a couple of his Forsythia’s offspring. A few years ago I took some cuttings from what was hanging over my side of the fence and just poked them into the earth on either side of my front garden. One of them is really in the wrong place as it will soon be competing with my fantastic pale pink Viburnum bodnantense, and I can’t have that. It will be dug up as soon as it has finished flowering this year, and planted six feet behind my Ribes, where the old one was. I need some bright spring colour and eventual bulk over there to cover the fence.
As my son says, my garden will soon be back to as it was. What comes around, goes around, and comes around again.
My Garden Transformation 
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