Patio pot prettification underway at last!

My heavens, what an involved task this is.  It doesn't really help that I'm not really all that sure where all the pots should be positioned, and of course the learning curve that this 'patio' gets a different amount of sun and wind to the old one.

I got stuck in at the most important place (well, for me anyway - this bench is where I sit for my well-earned coffee breaks!).  The huge barrel took some refilling!  Thank goodness I over-ordered on the Viridor stuff. In the big barrel I went for 3 of my Gaura 'Geyser White' which are quite large now as I potted them on and overwintered them in the greenhouse.  I do hope they perform as well as they did last summer when they were new....but if not, I suppose I didn't spend any money on them.  Also in this huge barrel I decided to home my Stipa gigantea which I dug up from the old garden last autumn....It's not looking too fab at present but again, fingers crossed it will produce at least a small spray of golden loveliness by late summer. Obviously ultimately it will find a permanent home in the eventual redesigned planting of the circle bed next year - but I am struggling hard with myself not to plant anything there this year which might resent being dug up again in the spring when anti-bluebell campaign recommences!

I also bunged a couple of dark cosmos plantlets in here - only 3 germinated so they wouldn't really make for a fantastic display in the flowerbed!  I've kept the pale cosmos plantlets for that.

 In the shallow wide barrel are 3 x Laurentia 'Astro Blue', and a couple of Bacopa which have a funny name - I will have to check on the labels and update here tomorrow.  The smallest barrel I felt needed to give more foliage interest, and as it's right by the kitchen door (and I am avoiding planting it in the flowerbed) I popped in my Broad Leaf Sage, again dug up and brought from the old house, though looking much perkier now after a few weeks of reasonable sunshine.  I'm really pleased with this grouping, and I hope that the 'afternoons only' sunshine regime will suit them.

Next I distracted myself with the twin pots which live in the circle patio...

I was tempted to put the 2 Stipa tenuissimas in these pots too, but then felt that would be too much and too high?  So just went for the 3 Laurentia 'Astro White' in each pot.  I might chance putting the stipas in the ground as they don't seem to mind being disturbed.

Here they are planted up together:

I had originally intended to have lots of Erigeron around the base of the bird bath, but I need to sow some new plants!  So for this year I have used the remaining 3 of my overwintered Gauras.

We also moved the chicken enclosure location a little bit, to give them more shade and shelter and to free up the upper end of the 'orchard' in optimistic preparation for my potting shed to be constructed (some time this century?) so the ladies had their first taste of 'official' free range garden exploration!  Interestingly, they all stayed pretty much together and had a happy time dismantling an ants nest at the shady base of the big clematis montana...except for Margot, who evidently likes to freestyle - she spent the time rummaging through the veg garden border (on the safe side of the rabbit proof fence, of course!) looking for slugs and snails, bless her.

They all went back in reasonably easily - except Queenie, who found the entrails of the baby rabbit which Cobweb had devoured for his late lunch, and she would not let me near her to herd her back into the pen! Either she thought I was going to take her tasty treasure off her, or perhaps she didn't want to share it with the other ladies!!!