Tuesday 14 October 2014

Getting there in the garden...


I finally feel like I've been making some progress in the garden. For the first three months after I moved in, my only efforts in the garden seemed more akin to destruction than beautifying.

You see, this is what the garden was like the day I moved in...


Lush, green, but not quite what I had envisaged - the bright blue garden shed and large deciduous shrubs were not part of the plan.

Instead, my pinterest garden board is generally full of pleached trees, and single colour borders...


So, I resorted to three months of digging out every misplaced and overgrown shrub in the garden - I finally bought a mattock...if only I'd done this three months earlier this task would have been an awful lot easier than digging them out with a spade.

Here is where the redevelopment of the garden has reached to date - I've just started to re-plant the beginning of a structure to the new garden scheme...


Ideally, I would have loved to do a row of pleached limes along the fence - unfortunately, it is such an ugly expanse of fencing, that I really needed to plant something that was evergreen...which narrowed the options considerably. I eventually settled on evergreen magnolias. 

They will be underplanted with predominantly hydrangeas and hebes. I did find a type of gardenia at the garden centre a few weeks ago. I didn't think they survived the UK winters but these are a supposedly hardy type - time will tell in the coming months.There are small hebes along the front of each of the two long beds - these are a small version which only grows to about 60cm. They are called 'Champagne' but are actually white flowers with the slightest hint of lavender. The upturned plant pots are serving as spacers for the planned hydrangeas - I've not been able to order them in time this year, so these will now need to wait until next spring to be ordered and planted.


I've installed a steel-edge garden edging to give a cleaner demarcation between lawn and garden beds. Unfortunately my lawn looks pretty dire at present - I had a major problem with perennial weeds that is still not yet resolved. I've laid turf in the new areas that were reclaimed from the large shrubs and seeded the dead areas with lawn seed. I'm hoping these will start to germinate before winter sets in. The small strip of grass that used to run along side the deck was actually a trough and full of weeds, so I decided to replace that small section with gravel.

Finally, I've dug a new garden bed just before the decking (in front of the shed). This is going to become home to some David Austin standard roses. I'm about to order them, ready for bareroot delivery in November. I am fairly certain that I'll be planting a variety called Winchester Cathedral. The soil is quite heavy clay...but the website assures me that roses do very well in clay!

It is a long way from what I have in my mind, but at least I feel like I'm building towards something now...and I think most of the heavy work is complete. Once the roses are planted that is really as much as I can do for this season - apart from planning and scheming what else to add next year come the spring.

In the very far corner, I've planted a small crab-apple tree...
...and I'm already looking forward to the spring blossoms.

In other news, my feline friend has been a frequent visitor...
As you can see, she makes herself quite at home...

...and now her brothers have also invited themselves in...meet Chester and Teddy!

1 comment:

  1. Wow - huge transformation already Annie! Can't believe how much you've already achieved on your own!!
    Yes to the roses - they love Clay soils, which is why they grow so well in Adelaide (plus a Mediterranean climate, which will be more of an uphill battle for you!).

    If you don't like the fence, I'd suggest painting it a dark colour (hire a paint sprayer and it will only take a short time). Dark colours recede, and it's a really good way to cover up bad fencing. I did it in our last house, as we had 5 different fence types, many not in great condition, and 3 neighbours (so no hope of them ever agreeing to unify them). We couldn't afford to redo the fences ourselves, so the painting was a great way to cover up a lot of sins. You can sort of see it here http://adelaidevilla.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/before-and-after-our-first-house.html although the shots are at night….

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