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.

Through the Garden Gate--July

We were pleased when the rain finally arrived and in great deluges. It has helped us to ease up on the watering, although there are still big cracks in the ground. I think it will be some time before the ground recovers from all the dryness. The reservoirs are drying up and at the end of this week there will be a hose pipe ban in force here.

The garden is still looking colourful and we can't help but be amazed at how different it looks now after only a year since starting work on making our new garden. The raised beds next to the seating area have been full of bees buzzing away. It's good to know that we are doing something to help the wildlife.

The late summer colour is now emerging--crocosmia, perovskia, rudbekia, phlox and monarda

  

I'm pleased to see that the hydrangea  'limelight' has survived the winter and is coming into flower. This was one of the first shrubs I bought last autumn when we were starting on our new garden.

I have two lots of sweet peas, one frame at the allotment and a wigwam in the garden and they are both flowering their socks off. The garden wigwam is behind the seating area where we get their beautiful scent wafting over to us. I am cutting them every two days and even though they only last a couple of days once cut it is worth it to have a constant supply of flowers in the house.

I am linking this post to Sarah's monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' blog at 'Down by the Sea'
http://downbytheseadorset.blogspot.com/2018/07/through-garden-gate-july-2018.html

Some welcome shade at the allotment

Having overhanging trees on the allotment is not what everyone wants and I have often complained about it, wishing we could have them cut down. But during this spell of hot weather the shade they provide has been quite welcome.

It has been too hot to work in the garden, so one day we escaped to the allotment to do some work under the big sycamore tree. We call this area the woodland garden. We can't grow anything here because of the tree, the slope and all the roots in the soil. When the grandchildren were younger it was their den. We now have a sitting area and a bug hotel there and use some of the space for storage. There are also a couple of little flower beds where I grow woodland and shade loving plants.

It was all very dry looking, a lot of the elder and privet needed cutting back and the weeds were beginning to take over.

It was a little cooler working under the tree and by the time we had cut every thing back we could actually see the sky.

I'd  thought I would get some wood chippings to cover the ground when we'd finished, but lucky for us we didn't need to buy any as someone dumped a big pile of them for the allotment holders to help themselves to. It looks much better now. I left our grandson's old den there, I couldn't get in there myself but I rather like it.

   

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'
post

A break from gardening

The last few months we seem to have been gardening non stop, working hard on getting our new garden finished and keeping up with the allotment. So I decided that now the weather was improving it was time to have a break from doing the garden and do the next best thing-- do some garden visiting and have a look at other peoples gardens. It's good to look at other gardens whether they are big formal gardens or small private ones part of the NGS. We often get some good ideas for our own garden from them.

Last weekend we visited an NGS garden called Hazlewood which is in the village of Bretherton near Leyland in Lancashire. This is the sort of garden which I like because it was made up of different garden areas so that you can't see all of the garden at a glance. 

The garden was  one and a half acres in size and included a hardy plant nursery. When we arrived we were pointed to the start of the garden which was  a small enclosed area.

Shrubs, trees and a wall gave the feeling of being completely separate from the rest of the garden. There was paving and gravel, a seating area and lots of plants in lovely terracotta pots. 

I do love a gate.

and steps

One plant in the border caught my attention. It looked like a phlomis with a smaller leaf and pink/lilac flowers. I learnt later that it was a phlomis, but wasn't available in the nursery to buy so that's one to look out for. There were interesting features as we came out of the gravel garden.

A folly with a bottle wall.

The Victorian fern house made me want to go out and buy lots of ferns.

Moving on to the rest of the garden we walked along  a wide path which had big rose arches and herbaceous borders. The new wooden arch in our garden was nothing compared to these. 

In the main part of the garden the borders were very cottagey. Beds of blue salvia, campanula, geraniums and nepeta, lovely gentle colours.

Across the lawn we followed a woodland path over a stream past the pond.

At the end of the path we found this massive spider's web made out of wire.

Out of the woodland we admired the pond.

There was a beach garden with a hammock. It looked very inviting but I don't think we were allowed to try it out.

Finally at the end of the garden was the hardy plant nursery where I bought a pink hardy geranium--'Russell Prichard'

I always get ideas from the gardens we visit, things I can do in my own garden, plants I could use, planting schemes, colours. I loved the pastel shades in some of the borders. I loved the many quirky things we spotted around the garden using old rusted gardenalia. One thing I liked was a rustic arrangement of little terracotta pots in a bigger terracotta bowl. It was so simple but looked really good.So now I know what to do with all those little pots I have at the back of my potting table.