The Garden


The Garden@19

We purchased the house in November 2004 and moved in during August 2005.
During that time along with decorating the house, plants were lifted at our previous garden and potted up ready for the move. 
The Garden@19 consisted of mainly lawn with a few shrubs, trees and a large shed in a lovely shade of Terracotta. The only plants remaining from when we took over are a
Cherry Tree, a Magnolia soulangeana, a Mohonia  and two Rhododendrons.
One of the main reasons we bought the house was the size of the garden,  not too big to demand too much time (sometimes) not too small to hold all the plants I would like to grow( all the time).
The rear Garden@19 is 126ft x 40ft slightly wider than the house at the start and then tapers to almost a point at the far end.  This is the propagating area where I have a potting shed, two greenhouses, compost bins and too many plants!
The soil is a free draining gravelly loam which is great to work with but can dry out very quickly in the summer due to the neighbours large Copper Beech, Silver Birch and Common Beech. They do provided a wonderful borrowed landscape to the garden especially in the winter.

The front is South facing and devoted to car parking, an iris bed, alpine boxes and colourful pot displays(Little Dixter).



The rear garden is North facing and divided into rooms (Hidecote) essentially so that it cannot all be seen at once.  This allows the planting of different garden styles. There is an Oriental garden, a white and green garden, (a white garden is so last century!),  a mixed border and a never ending woodland walk! (this is the Head Gardener's imagination getting the better of him but if it keeps him happy).
Raised beds edge the patio, one contains a herb bed with a special Standard Gooseberry Bush in the centre and two others are planted with tulips and wallflowers for the spring.  This is followed by exotics, mainly Dahlias ( Little Dixter again) and annuals, trained fruit trees create a dividing line between this area and the rest of the garden.

Spring 2005


Spring 2006


This photo was taken from the same position one year later.

I marked the layout of the different rooms and borders with canes and coloured spray marker  in November and then sprayed the grass in the border areas with roundup.

Spring 2005


You can just  see in this photo the grass is a lighter colour in the treated areas, I then planted straight into the turf adding a handful of Compost & Blood Fish and Bone into each planting hole. The garden  has never been dug. I first read of this planting technique in an article by Bunny Guinness, I thought if it is good enough for a RHS Gold Medal winning garden designer along with not having to dig the garden it was worth trying. 
We did not lose one plant within that first year.

 2006



Looking towards the house.

Spring 2005

2006


I hope you have enjoyed seeing The Garden@19 from the beginning. We look forward to you visiting in May to see it as it is today.
Please post your comments, I look forward to reading them.


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