In progress: the garden design and its execution
There were several design ideas at workplace when I was planning this garden layout :
I decided to dampen the master part of the garden up into two orbitual space oflawn , bordered by rich garden beds . The space shut the house would be the ‘ alien garden ’ , this would lead through a narrow-minded gap in theplanting to the ‘ perennial garden ‘ , beyond which was the ‘ productive garden .
This design entailed laying out the canonic intention and removing stacks ofturf . Ideally , I would have remove the turf , dug over the ground and buried the turf upside down beneath newly dug filth . The advantage of this is that you retain the crumbly top soil around the sod roots and benefit from the addition of organic matter to the soil as the turf breaks down .
t was 29 October when I started. The design and marking out process involved curving lengths of hose pipe. I did most of it by eye, so there were some adjustments as I went along. The suckering lilac and the conifer near the house eventually made way for a herb bed.
However , I can be an impatient gardener and my plan was to transform this garden in as a quick a clip as possible , so digging over the whole site by hand was not on the agenda .
You ’ll see what I did in the pictures below .
Forpart three of this suburban garden makeover – get through here .
t was 29 October when I started. The design and marking out process involved curving lengths of hose pipe. I did most of it by eye, so there were some adjustments as I went along. The suckering lilac and the conifer near the house eventually made way for a herb bed.
Forpart one – the blank canvass – fall into place here .
Martin Cole has been an avid plant life devotee and gardener for more than 20 years and loves to babble out and write about gardening . In 2006 he was a finalist in the BBC Gardener of the Year competition . He is a member of the National dahlia Society .
He antecedently lived in London and Sydney , Australia , where he select a sheepskin course in Horticultural study and is now free-base in North Berwick in Scotland . He founded GardeningStepbyStep.com in 2012 . The website is point at everybody who bang industrial plant or has been bite by the gardening bug and wants to know more .
Gardening Step by Step has beencited by Thompson and Morgan , the UK ’s largest mail rescript works retail merchant , as a website that publishes expert gardening content .
t was 29 October when I started. The design and marking out process involved curving lengths of hose pipe. I did most of it by eye, so there were some adjustments as I went along. The suckering lilac and the conifer near the house eventually made way for a herb bed.
I hired this turf remover. It was effective but not perfect …
There was still plenty of turf removal by hand.
Once the turf was cut it had to be rolled up – my wife was co-opted to this task. Those cleared spaces are for the vegetable beds and the green house.
The rolled turf was stored. Once the grass had broken down it made a lovely rich topsoil that I could incorporate back into the garden
The basic design emerges.
Instead of hand digging I used a rotovator. These are effective for large areas but can damage the soil structure if you overdo it.
Next came the addition of about 40 bags of manure.
I rotovated the manure in as well.
The suburban garden makeover is now in full progress as the soil is well dug over and looking rich and dark.
5 November and the first plants are in! Two Arbutus unedo trees flank the narrow gap into the perennial garden. Note how the curve of the border at the bottom left looks wrong. That needed correcting.
A frosty morning. It was now mid-November.
Work halted as winter set in. Note the chimney pot on the right. That was stuffed with straw and protecting a banana plant, Musa basjoo. Also notice the two large conifers on the left …
… and then there was 1 conifer. I removed the other to open up light into the vegetable garden
t’s now mid-March. Compare this picture with the previous one and you’ll see that I’ve widened the borders and reshaped some of the curves.
I’ve been marking out the area around the pond. Now some of the perennials are going in.
More perennials are planted, many of which I got from Beth Chatto’s nursery in Essex.
It’s starting to look like a garden. Note the bamboo, Semiarundinaria fastuosa, a lovely straight growing species, where the second conifer used to be.
Late April and there is plenty of Spring blossom around.
Alliums produce some of the garden’s very first flowers.
