Annoying nature!

I bet everyone reading this has these problems(?)

First one - weeds.  These two areas were immaculate on the 12th August: look at them now!

Second one - borders with odd sides.


You can see from the weeds photos above that the left hand bit of the border is not too bad whereas the right hand side is chock-a-block with weeds. The same thing happens with things I plant.

The centre of the border is defined by the tree.  I then plant to the right and left, mirror imaging what goes where.  I do like symmetry. Admittedly in a couple of years the plants are absolutely anywhere they like but I start off this way.  These two sets of three plants were pretty much identical.  The right hand side is flourishing while the left  struggles.  

I promise you these photos are taken from exactly the same height.


The obvious answer is light levels and, yes, there is slightly more shade on the left of the border than on the right but the emphasis is on 'slightly'.  In fact, for most of the day it looks exactly the same to me.

The border faces East and there is no shadow that I can see until very late into the day.  I am astonished that it can make such a difference.

Every one of my back garden borders behave in the same way - one side out performs the other.  So annoying.