How does your garden grow

FEBRUARY BRINGS WITH IT THE URGE TO PLANT, BUT BETTER TO USE THE LAST MONTH OF WINTER FOR PLANNING AND PROBLEM- SOLVING INSTEAD

I want to have a beautiful garden but don’t have much time for gardening. What are the best lowmaintenance plants?

There are a few plant families that don’t generally need much care and attention, three of the most versatile being hydrangeas, hardy geraniums and euphorbias. However, plant lists alone do not make a garden, so a more effective approach might be to consider the scene you want to create. If you already have grass and would like a more romantic atmosphere, for example, think about the look of an old orchard. Crab apples don’t need pruning and provide blossom, colourful autumn leaves and luminous fruit (mainly for the birds), often well into winter. Trees in the apple family are amazingly good for insects, too.

In this relaxed enclosure, spring primroses, crocus and daffodils could be followed by cow parsley, as the grass grows longer. Wildflowers, also known as weeds – not always welcome in short lawns – will help to turn your grass into a meadow. Easy shrub roses look surprisingly appropriate in long grass, while paths mown through will make the whole thing look more considered. Mow or strim from September onwards.

For a garden that gives you something to look at from June until the end of winter, with very little effort, you could plant groups of perennials (these die back over winter and grow again each spring) that are oblivious to drought. Persicaria, Russian sage, veronicastrum and foolproof grasses do not allow room for weeds. One caveat: soil preparation at the beginning is key.

What do I do with the shaded part of my garden?

Dappled or light shade is an ideal growing condition for many plants, while shade cast by surrounding walls and buildings has the added benefit of creating a micro-climate in which more tender plants can thrive. Consider creating a jungle garden in which the shapes and textures of large-leaved plants like tetrapanax are more important than flowers. In this green, cosseting environment, over-sized specimens give a garden structure and impact. This can be achieved in large containers, too: the giant umbrellas of Gunnera manicata, for example, will thrive in a watertight tank.

Plants tend to be less happy in the dry shade of a mature tree. Here, take a cue from nature and allow ivy to grow around (but not up) the tree. On the ground, ivy is a fantastically useful food source for birds and insects, with early-season pollen and late berries. Evergreen ferns that keep their shape in winter are good value in shade, as is non-invasive sweet woodruff and early-flowering pulmonaria, with its soft, speckled leaves that look good all year round.

In really stubborn areas where nothing will grow, consider garden ‘hardware’, in the form of a sculpture, an urn, or something more useful like a bird bath or feeding station under a tree. »

I hate my decking now. What can I replace it with?

Fashion in gardens is blissfully slowmoving, but when it turns, the backlash is fierce. Besides its former popularity, what is wrong with decking? Clearly it was overused as an anti-gardening device, like impermeable paving (no need to think about plants when the ground is covered over). But it is lovely when it floats over greenery that’s difficult to navigate, for instance boggy ground, or wilder planting that might overwhelm a path. It can be used like a boardwalk, crossing from one area to another. An area of decking is more contemporary and architectural than a terrace of York stone and should be treated as such, so plant around it with big leaves such as rodgersia, and collectible small pines and cedars.

That said, if your decking is for sitting out on and is falling apart, traditional stone paving is as good as ever, and will last for years – as long as it has good drainage and, ideally, room for erigeron or thyme to colonise the gaps. Stone paving (consider Indian sandstone as a good-looking, more economical alternative to York stone) also wins hands down in shadier areas, where algae and moss soon build up on decking, making it notoriously slippery.

My garden is long and narrow. How can I make it feel bigger?

So often, old and inherited gardens are mapped out within long boundaries, around long borders and a long, straight path, which make a garden look narrow, even if it isn’t. Reconfiguring the space on paper is the first thing to do. Decide what you want to use the garden for – is it for sitting in the sun, eating near the kitchen door, or growing flowers and vegetables? It could be used for all three, so dividing a rectangle into three squares will create choice, as well as immediately making a long, narrow garden feel more spacious.

If you like formality, this is the perfect excuse to create low dividing hedges of roses or evergreen lavender or Osmanthus x burkwoodii (give box hedges a miss; box caterpillar is rampant and near-impossible to overcome). These boundaries can make incursions across a long, deep, space. Plants that run wild within firm divisions will help to loosen the geometry.

Trees and well-chosen shrubs will create different heights (focusing the eye up and away from a long, narrow two-dimensional space), while the end of the garden can be framed or hidden and used as a place for compost and leaving some nettles to feed butterflies. Instead of straight lines, you could choose curves and mystery: a path that leads somewhere is a path to be followed. Keeping some of the garden hidden from view will make it seem bigger and so much more interesting.

My garden is overlooked. How can I make it feel more private?

Most gardens, whether front or back, are overlooked in some way. A pleasant front garden is appreciated by passersby, while also welcoming visitors. Behind a house, the blossom of a magnolia or cherry tree can also be enjoyed by others (this is when showing off is acceptable!) but, most importantly, trees give you screening. A group or small grove of light-canopied trees such as birch distracts onlookers, moving focus to the foreground and away from your boundaries.

Fast-growing evergreen hedges – think laurel and leylandii – have been tried and found wanting; similarly, a trellis that is creaking under the weight of a Clematis montana is overdoing it. An elegant trellis is worth the investment, as it is just as pleasing bare in winter, and covered with an annual such as Cobaea scandens in summer. Just the idea of a screen is hugely helpful; you don’t want to block out the light as well as your neighbours.

An inexpensive option for filtering out bright sunlight, as well as next door neighbours, is a UV-blocking shade sail stretched between fixed points over a season. Alternatively, a bigger budget could bring you roof-trained trees – like pleached hedges but trained horizontally to form a green outdoor ceiling – of lime, plane or white mulberry.