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| Garden Layout - The Front Garden
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| Being north facing, a lot of this part of the garden is in shade for much of the day, although the position of adjacent houses are such that it does get the early morning and late evening sun. It would be very easy to neglect this aspect of the house, and leave it looking dark and gloomy, but by mixing and matching, trial and error, I'm gradually creating a simple, open plan garden with all-year round interest and colour, that doesn't look out of place with the neighbouring houses, and gives us the parking space for 2 vans. | |
| The soil in the various beds has been improved, to a depth of 300mm, and is mulched with leaf mould or compost at the start of winter. All the beds are underplanted with bulbs; the large bed against the house has daffodils, including the dwarf 'Tete a Tete', the narrow bed edging the driveway has Snowdrops, Hyacinths and Pushkinia lobotanica, the circular bed in the centre has Hyacinths and the rectangular bed that separates my garden from Bert-next-door's has tulips and daffodils. |  The Front Garden in Mid-Spring |
| The drive edging bed This is a 250mm wide strip, bounded on the drive side by a 125mm wide kerb. On the lawn side, a 50mm wide kerb keeps the bed separate from the lawn. It's a strange little strip to work, as the end nearest the house is in permanent shade whilst the end nearest the public footpath is in full sun during the summer months. Consequentially, I use a wide variety of colourful plants that vary with the light conditions. The sunny end is usually planted with Mesembryanthemums and Gazanias in the summer, and the shady end with fuchsias and begonias. Lobularia maritima (Sweet Alyssum) is an excellent filler plant, and the small, white flowers do well in both sun and shade, as well as gently scenting the air at the entrance to the house. Any 'surplus' plants from the back garden find their way into this bed, as part of the trial and error process, but there are a few ever-presents, such as pansies and violas, along with spring-flowering primulas, aubrietias and arabis which fill in the gap between the finishing of the bulbs and the start of the summer bedding. In autumn, as the showier flowers are fading, dwarf chrysanthemums come into bloom and take the bed through to the winter frosts, when I have to rely on the greenery of next seasons wall-flowers, a couple of small hebes, a box, the odd winter cabbage or two and, of course, the so-called winter-flowering pansies. Finding someway of keeping this bed 'alive' during the winter is one of this year's lesser tasks. |
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 Bay Window Bed in Late Spring |
Bay Window Bed This is another tricky bed to plant for all-year round interest. It is fairly well sheltered, being tight against the north-facing wall and overhung by the projecting bay window, but the ground receives very little direct precipitation and can become very dry in the summer. The bed is just 600mm wide, separated from the lawn by a 125mm wide kerb laid on concrete and is drained by a sub-surface perforated land drain. The other two problems with this bed are, firstly, the inevitable shade, but I'm used to dealing with that, and secondly, cats. |
| Because muggins here has improved the soil a wonderful, well-drained loam, every damned cat in the neighbourhood wants to crap in this bed and pee all over the two small conifers. I have to use netting in the early spring to keep the odiferous creatures off the newly-emerging bulbs, but the only way to protect the conifers is to have a policy of zero-tolerance. Every cat in the village knows that merely setting one paw into the grounds of Borlochs Hall risks sudden saturation from some unsuspected quarter, be it a giant water-pistol, a water bomb confiscated off Slug Boy, or a bucketfull chucked out of a bedroom window. Being home all day allows me to get to know each cat's individual habits and daily schedule, so when a new and unfamiliar cat arrives in the area, or one of the local crew fancies its chances, it is only a matter of days before it gets its first, and, hopefully, last soaking. So the bastards come and piss all over my conifers while I'm in bed! :-( The bed is planted with 2 conifers, a chaemycyparis and a prostrate juniper, slightly left of centre, and a hosta at each end, underplanted with Bugle, bulbs and Osmanthus. There is a Cranesbill surrounded by Campanulas, and the gaps are filled with seasonal flowers, such as wall-flowers, busy-lizzies, fuchsias and Sweet Alyssum. Again, I'm short on winter interest, but I have some Hebes and a Skimmia to add in the coming year. |
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| Other Beds There are two other beds in the front garden; a kerbed, circular bed, central in the lawn containing the stunning Acer "Brilliantissimum" with 5 different heathers at the base. Due to the sogginess of the lawn, a special 1m x 1m x 1m tree pit was dug for the tree prior to planting, and this too is connected to the land-drainage system beneath the lawn. |
 The Front Garden in summer |
The final bed is the small rectangle that separates mine from Bert-next-door's. The mophead Hydrangea is a permanent fixture, and has been here since the houses were built in 1961 (not the only good thing to first appear in that particular year). The remainder of this bed is planted with a mixture of seasonal flowers, left-overs from the back garden mostly. It's pretty bare in the winter, but I'm hoping to change that in time for the coming winter by planting a couple of evergreen dwarf shrubs, although I'm not sure which, just yet. |
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| This is a scale diagram of the layout of part of the front garden. Passing your mouse over each plant will result in the name of the plant being displayed on your status bar. Clicking on any of these hotspots will take you to the page dedicated to that plant. | |
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| Planting Schedule for Front Garden | |
Perennials
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Bedding see bedding page
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Bulbs
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Pots and Baskets see baskets page
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Text, images, design and construction © cormaic web design - Last updated November 1st 2000