At the end of the bed, just barely in this pic, I placed a long, narrow metal tray I found at the dump, and in it put four English mint plants, and two pennyroyal plants. The mints had been inside my house, but had got a bad case of rust, so I cut them back hard, and moved the out here to recover. Funny story about the mint, actually - I wanted them in the house as they are reputed to be good fly deterrents, and flies here are bad in summer. They didn't seem to be having a great effect, though, and I was about to give up on them when one night a strange creature was flying around the living room as we were watching a DVD together. My son whipped out his net and captured what looked almost like a dragonfly, but not. He placed it in a jar to more closely examine and identify. Noticing it was slipping around inside the jar, I suggested a small twig or similar for it to rest on. As mint was the only indoor plant handy, we broke off a stem and put it in the jar. Shortly thereafter, it also caught an annoying moth and put it in another jar, with another sprig of mint. Ten minutes or so later, my son said "Mum, I think it's dead," referring to what we had identified as a damselfly. He tipped it out onto a cloth, and sure enough, it was completely still, with curled up legs. I watched the moth for a while. It, too, became inert. "Hmmmm.....I pondered. Death by mint??" My son tossed the moth outside, and as he came back in, the damselfly suddenly took wing! It seems the mint had anaesthetized the bugs, not killed them - once they were moved into fresh air, they recovered! Later that night, my son caught a net full of flies and tried the same treatment on them, with the same results. Hmmmm.....so perhaps the mint DOES have an effect, if there is sufficient of it in the space. Perhaps the flies the sense it's not good for them, and leave, as reputed. I have high ceilings and an open plan kitchen/dining/living/foyer. So I would need a lot more plants to do that trick. However, I have limited space to put them. Still thinking on this......
I also removed the remaining calendula plants from the half-circle bed, which has a Damson plum seedling in it, and planted some more violas there.
All in all, I'm pretty happy with how this area turned out!