Landscaping

Those of you who are gardener’s know that you must have patience when planing a garden.. You also have to have vision.. For you have to wait not one, but maybe many years for your ideas to grow as your plants take years to fill out your garden.

Coming back from the Chatsworth Flower Show at the beginning of June, we were both inspired to tidy up our back garden. Over the years it has undergone several changes, but I had also mainly planted up annuals in our back boarders. Bulbs and wallflower for spring.. And often got neglected when we were both working full time.

I wanted more of a herbaceous border so that it will take less maintenance. Even though I do not class myself as passed it just yet 🙄 Kneeling and bending up and down take their toll, So again like the flower beds you have to plan ahead. 👵

First things first.. Here is the old photo showing you the decking.. I planted bamboo and some privet in front of the green house as I eventually wanted to screen the green house from the rest of the garden.. We had planted two conifers too, which we wanted to grow as an archway. This takes time and patience..

So an old photo of what the garden once upon a time long ago, it looked like this. Picture was taken in 2010 Below I wish I could find one in the 80’s when we moved in. It was very overgrown. No lawn as such, and I replanted the whole lawn then by sewing seed and walking up and down on it to flatten it out..

Now we both got carried away with our project that I forgot to take the before photos, As my husband dismantled the decking one day while I was resting. But I found some old photo’s out so you can see what we did..

Here you can clearly see the decking, but it eventually got worn, slippy and not safe to walk upon. so it was used to put pots on for years, rather than sit on. You can clearly see we used decking too on the right side to hold the deeper raised bed of earth we had planted.

This Photo above was taken in 2013 you can now see how the arch is forming, and the Buddleia to back of the decking is growing, and the bamboo are starting to screen the greenhouse, the privet is seen between the arch on the left..

Taken April 2017, you see the decking is now out, wallflower are out at the bottom left where the decking was,and I have re-seeded with grass to make a curve where the square decking was. The Grass which is longer and not showing the hail stones as much. ( as this photo taken in a five-minute hail storm we had)

This has been in stages as the decking came out in the autumn of last year I then planted wall flowers in the space and grass seeded down part where the decking had been as I wanted to extend the lawn in a curve shape to the archway.

The above photo was taken in May, I had cut out the border in a more wavy pattern and stared to plant up the corner where the decking had been, we moved the bird bath and I put my fairy house at the bottom of my garden, where all good fairies now live 🙂 Sorry this picture is not so sharp and clear.

The next steps I wanted a more defined border, one where the lawn strimmer would not take the heads off my flowers 😉 lol So this is the next stage.

Then we concentrated on the right side of the garden

Now you see the effect from the first photo to the this one I wanted.. It only took Seven Years to grow to this stage lol.. But it separates the garden from the greenhouse and our outside cold frames. and three dustbins we have for recycling. One for paper, tin and plastic, one for household waste, and the other for garden waste.. Which is not all that much as much of it gets composted in the allotments.

Here you can see we used larger slats of wood on the right for the raised bed, and continued the theme with the smaller ones to encase the water features.

Now a few more years of waiting as these plants grow and fill out the boarders

Now for a closer look click each to get a larger view.

Boarder in June

From the archway, looking up from the greenhouse

Hollyhocks coming into flower

Clematis and Hollyhocks

looking down from the swing and the fish pond

The fish pond, hubby made years ago, building up from brickwork taken from a 70’s fireplace that we took out.

Another Bird Bath and water feature

These were all grown from cuttings I posted the other year. Now look at them.

My peaceful corner..

Hydrangea Blooms

And these are natures little gifts, Self set Lobelia that dropped as seeds from our hanging baskets last year.. I left them to grow.

And of course, we had to have some fairy lights.. Hope you enjoyed.. as much as we did tidying it all up

Happy Gardening

~Sue~

Next time more blooms from Chatsworth.

We often want to revamp and give our gardens a new Look. Recently we wanted a new drive laid and extended, so we had to move our beautiful Hydrangea plants. We had a large White with tiny blue flowers seen in the below photograph, and a blue one which can not be seen behind the bush. Both had to be dug up and replanted last September to their new positions and we hoped that they would take..

This was our front garden in 2012 with the large Hydrangea on the corner.

My hubby took several cuttings from each of them and we over wintered them on a spare bedroom window sill. Just in case the main Hydrangea shrubs didn’t like where we moved them to.

We wanted an easier to maintain front garden, so as I wouldn’t have 4 full boarders to maintain. This was the new Look with only 2 boarders to maintain.

I wanted space to add Pots so I could easily plant both Spring and Summer flowering blooms in them.

The Front Lawn and Pots in 2015.

Pots on the Front Garden Filled with Begonia’s

Here’s how to take the cuttings of the Hydrangeas. You take a new shoot from the main plant. Soak the stem in water for a couple of hours. Then you dip the stem into your rooting agent.. We preferred Organic rooting gel.. You then place into a Small pot with compost and put a plastic bag over it to help propagate. Keep them covered for about 3 or 4 weeks until they have rooted..