Finally, we have a formal plan for the Garden From Scratch. Until now, we’ve been working from scribblings on post-it notes and at the edge of notebooks.
The ink has barely dried before the work has commenced. In fact, a rough sketch in August was enough to start the hard landscaping(this roughly translates as digging up the lawn).
But our formal plan needed to take into account what we needed from the garden, along with what the space could actually provide. We wanted to entertain friends, grow our own vegetables in a potager, encourage wildlife, park our car at the back and store our tools anywhere other than than in the bathroom where they had been living. Oh, and it needed to be stylish as well.
Our initial post on the garden barely scratched the surface of the problems we faced. There was that nasty blue fence, for starters. It dominated the whole garden visually, and one neighbour helpfully informed us that it had made the previous owners a laughing stock. Encouraging.
And on the subject of boundaries, while our neighbours are lovely, the flimsy trellis partitioning our garden from theirs means seeking solitude in the garden is impossible. And by law we cannot change the structure of the trellis itself.
My first, tentative attempts at plans were scuppered when I discovered that the path running down one side of the garden was in fact underlaid with concrete. This meant we would have to work with this feature as demolishing it would be too costly.
The planting itself was ill-thought out to say the least. A crucial mistake in garden planning is to not plan your planting before you get very excited and buy dozens of plants which look like a dog’s dinner when placed together.
So it took some thought to put together a stylish and fun plan which isn’t going to cost a bomb to realise. We’re growing as much as possible from seed to save money, and only splurging on plants which will hold the design together, such as the lavender bordering the path. And as we may only be working on this garden for two years, we will be relying on gorgeous annuals such as cosmos to bring the planting scheme on. If you’re wondering what all the brightly coloured blobs in the mixed border are, the inspiration board below should help.
{Garden from Scratch planting scheme – click image to enlarge}
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