A month on since our last update, the back garden has continued to fill out as plants have grown (and a few new ones have been added).

Back garden 26 Aug 2020

We’ve added Delphiniums to the front bed to give us more early season colour and elsewhere the planting is settling in as we’d hoped.  The Acer bed with its purple and green colours has been especially pleasing.

Acer bed 25 Aug 2020

The arch over the bench is also filling up with both a honeysuckle and our blackberry.

Bench and Arch

The blackberries are already giving a good harvest, as are the sweetcorns.

Blackberries

Sweetcorn

The back garden is really starting to fill out now. Sweet peas, Cosmos, Gaura and Dahlias are all adding summer colour.

Back Garden 12 July

In the vegetable beds the sweetcorn and onions are both growing strongly – both are likely to be ready for harvesting in the next few weeks.

Sweetcorn 19 July

Spring is arriving in the garden and the wet winter should certainly have helped both the new and re-planted trees and shrubs get established.  One of the main viewing points is from the bedroom window, so the garden has to work from above.

7 March 2020

Equally we want to be immersed in it when are actually in it.  At this time of year there isn’t that much growth, but as the year progresses we are hoping that we will feel much more enclosed by the planting.

Garden 18 March 2020

The Camelia under-planted with bulbs is intended to provide a focal point and we are hoping that the rose bed edged with lavender will provide summer long fragrance for the re-sited garden bench.

Camelia 18 March 2020

Rose bed 18 March 2020

The dry summer now seems ages ago as it has barely stopped raining since October and the river levels are rising.  However, this has meant a good planting autumn and the last bits and pieces for this year have gone into the back garden.  The most notable additions have been two sets of fruit cordons – three apples and three plums.

Apple cordons 3 December 2019

Plum Cordons 3 December 2019

Overall, the garden is now looking like this.

Back garden 3 Dec 2019

The large number of Gaura in pots have been saved from the front garden, where we’ve lifted all of the instant colour that we put in for the summer in order to get some structural shrubs in over the autumn.

Front garden Dec 2019

We will be returning some of the Gaura to the front and putting some in the back in front of the Pyracanthas and also putting back some of the Dahlias, which are over-wintering in the greenhouse.  Other Dahlias will find new homes on the allotment.

One element of the front garden that has matured very quickly is the herb garden and even in the depths of winter we are getting plenty of fresh herbs for the kitchen.

Herb garden Dec 2019

We are starting to notice the first signs of emerging spring bulbs, so we will be checking up on these as spring 2020 progresses to see whether there are gaps that will need filling next autumn.  One of the great joys of gardening is that you’re always looking forwards, making it an innately optimistic pastime.

As summer has turned to autumn in our neck of the woods, we’ve been getting some useful amounts of rain and have started to make progress with planting in the back garden.  The saved plants (standard bay, Camelia) and some new ones that had been in pots (apple tree, Wisteria) had to go in as soon as the ground was prepared, so required some additional watering at first.  Now that the autumn rains are allowing water to penetrate to greater depths we’re working on filling up the planting spaces.

This overview shows that there is still a long way to go, but things are taking shape.  The saved Camelia now takes centre stage and we’ve lifted the canopy to make a better shape.  This plant and a new Sorbus are designed to give a stopping off point/hiding place for birds on their way to the bird feeder.

Looking down 22 Oct

Also to provide cover and food for birds, we’ve put in a row of Pyracanthas down one fence.  the plan is to let these cover the fence, but to keep them trimmed back to a width of about 30-40 cm so that they are large enough to hide birds and their nests, but do not sprawl across the entire border.

New Pyracanthas and Sorbus

We decided that we really didn’t want a garden without roses, so one bed is a rose bed (bordered by lavender (Munstead) with Erigeron winding through it).  We have one rose in there so far (a present from Mark’s Mum and Dad) but have four more bare-rooted ones arriving later in the autumn, including one to climb up the central obelisk.

Rose bed 22 Oct

We’re trying to get different heights into the garden, with structures and trees.  So along with the obelisk we’ve put in an arch, which has our blackberry coming up from one side and a honeysuckle (Copper Beauty) on the other.

New Archway

We are planning to have some space for cut flowers, which may or may not be the bed currently hosting some of our Dahlias, but they were available and guaranteed some colour for this year.

Our Dahlias 22 October 2019

One area that is pretty much fully planted is our Acer bed – featuring two rescued Acers.  We’ve gone with dark Sedums (Hylotelephium as we should now call them) to complement the Acer foliage and then grasses for contrast.

Acer bed 22 Oct

To augment the Cyclamens, we have put in white crocuses and white narcissi and will be adding white tulips in November so that there will be about 6 months of white flower in this area during the darker months of the year.

Summer has arrived and some very welcome rain in June helped the new front garden to get established, but the generally dry weather has meant that we have still had to water the new lawn occasionally to make sure that it gets through the first summer.  Once it has bedded in for a full year it will be much more resilient and we shouldn’t need to water it next year.

The herb garden is now properly established and it is a real treat to be able to just step out of the front door and harvest whatever we fancy.

Herb garden 19 August

The flowers that we put into the front border as a stop gap while we work out a long-term structure benefited from the wet June and the subsequent sunshine and are now a riot of colour.  The sunflowers are an interesting short cultivar called Teddy Bear and these and the Gaura provide a backdrop to the assortment of orphaned Dahlias liberated from the allotment.  In the background you can see that the crab apple has settled in well.

Flowers 19 August

The ripening crab apples do however signal that even though the sun is still shining, the days are getting shorter and autumn is on the way.

Crab apples 19 August

In the back garden the landscapers started work in late July.

Diggers at the ready

Clearance was pretty quick and by the beginning of August the patio was starting to take shape and we were really pleased that the builders had managed to save so many of the old slabs for us as we had an already aged look to the patio.

Emerging Patio 1 August

As per the plan we went without a lawn and have used permeable self-binding gravel to separate growing areas and by mid-August the framework was just about complete.

Nearly there 18 August

Back garden 19 August

The first job will be to get the saved plants (in assorted pots) back into the ground.  we will then do the bulk of the planting in the autumn once the weather gets cooler and damper so that new plants will be under minimal stress, but the soil should still be warm enough to encourage good root growth.