Those that are half-pruned should produce early fruit, and the rest will behave as you expect and produce their “normal” late crop. I am not surprised that they did not fruit in their first year after planting, but you are right to have expected better the following year.Īlthough raspberries favour slightly acid soil, you say you have succeeded with them before so I can only surmise that the ferocious hot, dry weather last summer has got a lot to do with the lack of fruit, effects made worse by rock-hard clay soil.Ĭanes of autumn-fruiting raspberries such as this are generally lopped down to a few inches from the ground around now (as you did last year), but you could try a different tack this year: cut only half of the canes down to the ground, the rest to about half their current height.
For “colour”, if required, potted annuals could stand neatly on the stony mulch, thus providing no competition for the roots of the hedge, which would also benefit from any drainage of liquid fertiliser watered on to the annuals. 
After planting, a covering of porous weed-smothering membrane, topped with a layer of coarse gravel or cobbles (which can be removed and replaced when the compost is refreshed each spring) will help to retain moisture. Compost should be loam-based (John Innes No 2 or 3), topped up with organic matter yearly. Griselinia littoralis, Olearia macrodonta, Brachyglottis ‘Sunshine’) that can be controlled/shaped by early summer pruning, their taller shoots tied to the trellis to provide coverage. Easier still would be exposure-tolerant evergreens (e.g. Evergreen climber Trachelospermum jasminoides (on Rachel’s “wanted” list) when grown in containers is relatively slow-growing and manageable, but may not enjoy the site. Each container of the size above should house a maximum of two shrubs or climbers, to allow sufficient root space for proper growth. Limiting the planting to two to three evergreen species will look smarter. The following may help, bearing in mind that this will always be a difficult, high maintenance project. The current mix of clumps of thrift, small clematises and scrambling variegated euonymus does not work, and she asks for ideas. The rather exposed site gets afternoon sun. Rachel Evans, in her attempts to form an attractive defining barrier between her and next door’s block-paved drive, has come up against an oh-so-common problem – namely, how to achieve an attractive, at least partially evergreen, thicket in containers (four of them in a row, each 3ft/1m long and barely deeper than most window-boxes), and each with its own metre-high backing trellis. The subject of garden boundaries rears its head over the top of the trellis again.
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