Our new garden project--almost there

 When you're a gardener, your garden is never finished, so I've heard.

That is certainly true for me. In my last garden I seemed to have a new project every year. Not necessarily a big project, sometimes it was just rearranging a border, adding more plants, making a new seating area etc.

The plans we had for our new garden are now completed. I'm sure we will make changes as time goes on, there are still one or two corners of the garden where I'm not sure if it looks right, but time will tell as plants mature.

In the back garden the last thing to do was to make one border bigger and bring it up to the shed. I hadn't been sure what we were going to do with the area in front of the shed, but now it looks good and I have been planting it up with cottage garden plants, lupins, astrantia, achillea, geraniums, poppy. I have put a tall obelisk in the middle and am going to plant sweet peas there soon.

The side border below the shed was a little narrow and crammed with plants. Making it wider has meant I could move plants forward and allow them all to spread out a bit.

In the front and side gardens we have not made any major changes as it didn't look too bad. There are some good mature shrubs in there --weigela, viburnum, lilac, hydrangea and chaenomelese.  We have simply made the borders bigger so I can get more plants in. The original narrow borders were quite dry under the wall and a bit stony making it difficult to plant anything. So I have been busy collecting plants and planting up. I'm hoping for a colourful display this summer. I bought a garden bench, my husband wondered why I would want to sit in the front garden where everyone walking past would be looking at me. It is simply somewhere to plonk myself for a few minutes when I want a break from weeding.

So that's it, our new garden is finished for the time being. When we look at it now we find it hard to believe how much we have achieved in two years. It looks so different to when we first moved in.

It's gone from this 

To this

and from this 

to this

to this

and this

Our garden is now a space that we enjoy being in. We spend a lot of time out there, both relaxing and gardening. I will continue to blog about it, but not as 'our new garden project'.

Our new garden project 7--another path and an arch

The next stage of our garden project was to continue with the path work. The bottom of the garden was now looking good, but needed linking to the house where the flagged area was. I had always wanted an arch to grow climbers up and could just picture one at the end of the patio leading out onto the garden. So our next plan was to complete the path from the seating area up to the patio through the arch and have a small flower bed each side of the archway. Holly the cat loves being in the garden with us and follows us around as we work.

After all that had been completed so far in the garden, this was a much smaller project and was finished in no time. As usual Richard was the builder and I was the designer and planter. The arch was put in place first and then the sleepers for the raised beds either side. The same system for building the path was used again with gravel and topped with slate chippings.

 I decided to delay the planting up of the two beds as we were going to have some rendering work done on the back wall of the house and I didn't want anything getting in the way of the builders or being damaged by them. The plants in pots which you can see in the photos are herbs which had been on the patio and were moved there to be out of the way of the builders.

In the meantime I gave a lot of thought to what I wanted to put in these two small beds. We visit a lot of gardens open to the public which gives me lots of ideas for my own garden. I like to be able to look at a garden and not see the whole of it in one go. So my idea is to have the arch covered in climbers and plants either side which will provide a bit of screening when we are sitting on the patio. I'm so looking forward to the scaffolding being taken down so that we can get on with the next phase of our garden on the flagged area.

Our new garden project 6--sorting out the bottom border

 Since we moved into our new house last year and started working on the garden our problems have been always about the drainage. Here at the top of the town many of the houses around suffer from the same problems as us in their gardens. The water runs down the fields and through our gardens, which are of clay soil. We had a really wet winter and often as I walked around I could see other gardens with the same problems as ours--puddles of water everywhere.

We sorted out one part of the garden with a raised seating area and raised beds, but the bottom borders were still causing a problem. When it rained the water collected down at the bottom. Richard had put drains in, but we still had the water there. We have had a really wet winter and every time it rained we saw the rain was collecting in a big puddle at the bottom of the garden. 

The bottom of the garden last year 

Richard is not one to be defeated and he spent a lot of time making plans for this part of the garden. I had thought I would quite like to have a path around the lawn. This was a good idea as when the lawn was wet it just became a muddy mess, so to have a path to walk on would make things easier. It would stop the lawn getting messed up when tending the borders. Early in the year when walking across the lawn, I slipped on the wet grass and went flat on my back, injuring my ankle. It was not a good idea to walk on the wet grass. 

Richard came up with a plan to raise the level at the bottom of the garden with sleepers and make a path with a gravel base and then topped with slate chippings to match the seating area and also to raise the lawn slightly down at the bottom end.

Making a start, levelling and raising up the front of the border

 I must admit I was a bit apprehensive about his plans to start with. I thought they were--well, big plans and hoped he could cope with the work involved.

The path starting to take shape

Richard doesn't always have a proper plan to work from, he tends to work things out as he goes along and I'm always told 'Don't worry, it will be fine'. As he worked on the project I could gradually see how his plans were working.

First layer of gravel on the path

Slate chippings in place and the lawn re levelled

The turf arrives

Laying the turf

I worked on the planting schemes in the bottom border thinking about the wet soil. So the plants were all those which would be happy growing in damp conditions. There is also a bit of shade from the fence so that was considered too. The border had been planted in the autumn with a rowan tree, a twisted willow, a cornus and a physocarpus. In between these I planted astilbe, ligularia, grasses which liked wet conditions, marsh marigold, hardy geraniums, trollius, iris, candelabra primula, and spring bulbs to name a few. It's quite a long border so there was plenty of space to fill. I had brought some of the plants as cuttings from the bog garden at the allotment. 

All that work was done earlier this year, now it's finished and we are into summer. We are in a hot spell. We haven't had any proper rain for weeks so we can't tell if raising the level of the garden has worked. The border is looking lovely and we often sit admiring it. Plants are coming into flower daily and it is a joy to see.

Our new garden project 5--creating a woodland and stumpery

Once the seating area in our new garden was completed, the next phase in our garden project was to do something with the bottom left hand corner of the garden.  This is the bit just below the seating area. We spent quite some time thinking what to do here. The silver birch tree had been planted near to the fence and the rest of the space was just grass. Should we leave it grassed or should we have a planting area?

A bit of digging revealed that right down in the bottom corner was just stones. We had come across this problem when we had done the other side of the garden and had turned that corner into a bird feeding area. I didn't need another bird feeding area, so I decided that I would plant a few shrubs just below the seating area and the silver birch tree and put some logs and tree stumps in the stony corner where it was impossible to plant anything. This would create a little woodland stumpery and wildlife area.  I have seen stumperies when we have visited open gardens and often thought I would like to build one.

        

We had a few tree stumps down at the allotment which we brought back to the garden and arranged in the corner. I obtained another stump from our local builders merchants where we buy a lot of the materials for our garden project. I spotted the stump amongst a pile of logs and asked if it was for sale.  They very kindly said I could have it for free. So that made me very happy.

Over the winter I planted a few shrubs-- a yellow stemmed dogwood, a contorted Hazel a witch hazel and a choiysia.

In the spring I planted crocus, mini daffodils, snowdrops and hellebores. There are some ferns around the tree stumps. In the bottom corner where the stony ground is I had to leave the ferns in pots but I was able to plant others in the ground away from the stones.

In a previous blog post I wrote about bringing plants from my old garden and I had a lovely time planting up the stumpery with foxgloves, aquilegia, pulmonaria, tellima, to name a few. To finish off the soil was covered with a layer of bark chippings which gives a nice woodland look. I am going to put a few stepping stones down to avoid having to keep walking on the soil as it is quite a big bed. 

  

I'm quite pleased with this little garden area, it should look good once the plants are more established and hopefully will attract the wildlife. 

Our new garden project 4--planting up the beds

Gardening experts always say that when you move into a new house not to touch the garden for a year to see what plants are growing and what the soil conditions are etc. We haven't done that with our new garden as the back garden was just lawn. There were no trees or shrubs--nothing. So we were able to get started straight away.

As we continued with our plans for the new garden, I spent time thinking what to plant where. There were problems with the soil as I mentioned in previous blogs. In our last garden we had a lot of shade so I always had to bear that in mind when buying new plants. In this garden there is more sun, still some shady areas and heavy clay soil which retains water. So I have had to think about these conditions when planting. I did a lot of reading up on the best plants to grow in moist conditions and I now have a long list. 

When the seating area and raised beds were completed at the end of the summer last year, I decided it was time to start planting up the beds.  Those raised beds looked so good filled up with soil and the good thing was that they didn't have the problem with the water that some of the other areas of the garden have.  I had brought some plants with me from our old house, I bought plants in plant sales, I had garden gift vouchers given to me for my birthday, I explored all the local garden centres. For months after we moved in there were pots set out in the borders, whilst I decided the best places to plant them all. Much as I wanted to get plants in the garden, I often felt daunted by it all not wanting to make any mistakes. But mistakes don't matter because plants can always be moved if they are in the wrong place.

We wanted to plant some trees for height and structure so the first to be planted was the trees. We bought a Silver birch, a Rowan, an Amelanchier and a Liquidamber. I also had a contorted willow in a pot given to me by a friend a few years ago which I decided to plant in the ground. I was so excited when the trees were delivered. It's lovely to be able to have your own choice of trees instead of being stuck with something which came with the garden and you may not like.  I love silver birch, as well as the lovely white bark they are a really graceful tree, their small leaves creating dappled shade. Rowan has berries in the autumn, so good for the birds.

Amelanchier

The amelanchier has blossom in the spring, berries in the autumn loved by birds and good autumn colour. Liquidamber also has good autumn colour and lovely shaped leaves.

Liquidamber

Once they were all planted I put some of the shrubs in. I had read that Hydrangeas soak up water so I thought that would be a good one for our garden. Other shrubs I planted were Pittosporum for evergreen foliage, Cottinus, Fatsia, Physocarpus, Cornus.

Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight'

Trees and shrubs form the backbone of the garden, providing structure during the winter months. After these the herbaceous planting went in. There were  grasses, some tall ones for the back of the borders, some smaller for the front or middle. Grasses look good in the autumn and winter when other plants have gone over. I like grasses, there are so many different sorts, some of them are so tall they can provide screening just like shrubs can. I was able to bring some from our old garden.

As well as growing plants and shrubs that look good at different times of the year, I like to grow plants which I can cut to bring in the house, some for foliage some for their flowers, so that was another thing to think about when buying plants.

Japanese anenome

Salvia

I set out pots of plants in the borders so I could get an idea if they would look right. This took a lot of imagination. The pots got moved around several times before I finally decided I just had to make a start. Once they were in the ground they looked great and as I said before, if they are in the wrong place I can always move them. Most plants are fairly tolerant and don't mind being messed about.

I planted up the raised beds and the border down the right hand side of the garden with mixed planting--trees, shrubs and flowers. In the bottom border where all the water is I just planted the trees and shrubs for the time being as there is still work to be done down there.

The garden looked so much better with plants in, especially those around the seating area.  Well that's the first lot of planting done, there will be more to add over the year as we do more work to the garden. I want to put some climbers and wall shrubs in along the fences. Months later everything is looking ok and although the cold weather hasn't left us yet, the plants seem to be coping well.