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 8--a shed and a gate

During the summer we had the back wall of the house rendered so put our garden plans on hold until it was finished. I couldn't wait to get the next stage of the garden sorted as it involved a shed! I just love a garden shed.

The shed was to go at the top of the garden near the house wall.

 Once it was in place the inside needed organising--shelves, a bench to work on and hooks to hang the tools up. I really enjoyed getting the shed organised.

Now it is done it is lovely place to spend time. I can work at the bench looking down at the view of the garden. Everything is where I can find it, instead of being all over the garage in different places as before. It is my own little space.

The other job was to put up a fence across the back of the drive with a gate leading in to the garden. Rather than buying fence panels, Richard built the fence and gate himself. This has really made a difference to the garden now providing us with some privacy and also makes the patio area into a little secluded space.

That was all done last autumn, so we have had a break from gardening work during the winter. Now the weather is improving and we are able to get out into the garden we will be starting work again soon.

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.

Through the Garden Gate--June

June has been an incredibly hot dry month especially for us in Lancashire where we  normally get a lot of rain. We are not used to having to water our gardens nearly every day, but that is how it has been. Having a new garden with new plants we have had to take care of them, and then there are the patio pots too.

But despite the dry conditions our new borders are doing well. In fact they are growing at an amazing rate. I have decided that this must be because of all the good stuff I put into the beds last autumn to improve the clay soil--top soil, mushroom compost, manure. Well it worked because the flowers are all over the place in the raised beds. It is now that I can see where plants were wrongly planted and so in the autumn or next spring I will be rearranging the plants in the borders. It will be a case of  moving some plants which did not grow as tall as I expected to nearer the front and others which are too tall to be at the front need to be moved to the back. Then there are the colour combinations which didn't quite workout.  The bright red and yellow geums are a bit of a clash of colour next to purple lychnis.

In my last garden I could never grow nepeta or cat mint as it is often known as. In my new raised beds I planted three good sized pots of nepeta and they have romped away. Holly the cat loves it and if she's not chewing on it she is often to be found curled up next to one of the plants with a sleepy look on her face. As is her friend Zeus the cat from across the road. I love the way the plant tumbles over the raised bed with the Alchemilla mollis. they make a good combination.

In the smaller raised bed at the back of the seating area I seem to have managed the planting a bit better. A gaura which I bought from a visit to Holker Hall in Cumbria last summer has lovely dark foliage and the pale pink flowers contrast well with the dark red leaved persicaria 'red dragon' and silvery lamb's ears.

Some plants I brought from the allotment bog garden and are doing quite well even in the dry conditions we have at the moment. 

It has been really too hot to do much gardening on these lovely summer days and sometimes too hot to even sit out in the sun. But we have been taking time to just relax and enjoy the garden and watch new plants bursting into flower each day.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea ' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate'
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