Death to cineraria

Here's a before and after for you - a bed entirely full of six-foot high cineraria (probably 'silver dust' looking at the leaves) that was very much living its best life out by the clothesline. They are not meant to be six foot high ... in the interests of accuracy I googled what the plant is and it's been reclassified as Jacobaea maritima, commonly known as silver ragwort, which is all news to me. I am not entirely sure if it's the same plant but it does look a lot like it, and the foliage is very distinctive. And very pretty! But the inside of these plants was not happy; lots of dead twigs and generally lanky and miserable.

Actually on further googling it could even be Centaurea cineraria, the velvet centaurea, which is a completely unrelated plant that looks almost exactly the same. You can tell the difference by the flowers, so now we will NEVER KNOW because I chopped it right back, saw it still looked sad, so pulled it all out by the roots and plan to put it through the chipper. Lost to science.

As you can now see, this is some sort of building foundation turned into a couple of garden beds. There is concrete and rocks and a big wooden post and there has been careful planting and mulching in the past. Brad is thinking hibiscus there, which would be lovely (cold weather hibiscus of course, not the pretty tropical ones), but in the meantime we have discovered another actual part of the garden. Can you tell I read The Secret Garden about fifty times when I was a kid? I now follow the little blue-headed wrens about in case they're going to lead me to a hidden gate. In a big brick wall. Sigh.