Gwynedd,
United Kingdom 
Hello. I'm a bit of a novice gardener trying to start a "cottage garden" type border of flowers in my front garden. It's facing north west, about 500 ft above sea level, quite exposed to winter gales, in the Snowdonia foothills. There is a low (3ft) wall that I'd like to hide. Have thought of Clematis, but worried that the wall isn't tall enough. The wall is quite close to the house and so don't really want to make it any higher with a trellis which would block the view from our windows. Perhaps an evergreen would be good, but would also like a nice fragrance. Any suggestions anybody please? Thanks.
24 Jun, 2010
Answers
You could try a passion flower along the wall? or summer jasmine also plant arum lilies and day lilies against the wall, how about various ferns which give beautiful shades of green, try a few plants at a time to see how they fare, that is the only way to test then out.
24 Jun, 2010
A variegated Ivy would look nice creeping over the wall and give it a pretty background colour for subsequent plants. Obviously no scent but then you would have it all winter too............
24 Jun, 2010
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Winter gales, exposed position, not much choice then, really - have a look at Prunus 'Otto Luyken', evergreen shrub, quite tough, only gets 3 feet high. Mahonia aquifolium's another evergreen low growing shrub which has yellow mimosa like flowers in early spring. Neither of these could be said to fit the description "cottage garden" - but then cottage garden means lots of flowery plants in summer which then disappear completely in the winter, leaving nothing but bare ground and dead growth, so a combination of plants is usually better. Given your situation, it might be better to restrict the fragrance requirement to stuff you grow for the summer only, with things like ten week stocks, etc - a wall of 3 feet is too low for honeysuckle, etc.
24 Jun, 2010