Readers’ gardens
I'm booked on a design course
I’ve been thinking back at last year's successes. The extension to the rear of the house is finished and our now smaller garden is ready for a revamp. I’ve booked onto a garden design course and can’t wait to apply my newly acquired knowledge.
My friend and I are going to build a small Japanese garden as a birthday surprise for her husband and researching design ideas and plants, such as black mondo grass (ophiopogon), ferns, bamboo, maples and Japanese forest grass (hakonechloa), plus the use of water features, has been stimulating.
For our own garden, we’re collecting photos of ones that we like, design features from places we’ve visited, plus making lists of plants we’ve always wanted. Our new space must feel modern to match the new extension, but also have room for the traditional mixed border, which we’ve always nurtured, and be a plot that has personal meaning for us. I feel the challenge of garden design will develop me as a gardener in new and exciting ways.
Getting out in the garden for an overdue tidy up was so enjoyable. We worked from one side to the other during a fresh and sunny afternoon. My husband pruned the lollipop tree and I removed all the dry stems of the Michaelmas daisies, cosmos, peonies and grasses and took out the last of the summer annuals after collecting seed. The compost heap is now well stocked, ready to work its magic and nourish our summer plants.
The native primroses have been flowering for months and a trim exposed plenty of new flower buds. The bulbs are all peeping through and we planted two more pots of miniature tulips (‘Red Riding Hood’ and a striped Dutch mix) to bring some springtime cheer. All of the native snowdrops we planted last year ‘in the green’ are showing young shoots already.
I found that our holly, with its scarlet red clusters of berries, had mingled into a neighbouring pot of bamboo. This presented a fabulous contrast of foliage, and it made me smile to see a stalwart of winter snuggling up to a plant from an exotic climate!