NOTES FROM garden MY
Alexandra Campbell gives advice on creating seating spaces in your garden.
I’VE been looking back at the changes we made to the garden last year and thinking about what worked and what didn’t. think that what made the most difference was creating new seating spaces.
Over the past few years we’ve been re-vamping a difficult shady corner, where we had to remove a rotten pergola.
We thought about a number of options for it, but in the end we bought some vintage garden furniture and simply put it in the space where the pergola was.
Placing chairs or a bench in a different place gives you a different view of the garden, and it also works to create a focal point.
The pergola had had stone pavers, so there was a good hard surface to place the seating on.
You might need to create an area of hard landscaping to place chairs on, although I’ve known people to put chairs and benches directly on grass. It’s not satisfactory as metal legs will sink in and ultimately wood will rot. But a stone or concrete bench would be fine.
Some friends of ours added a square of decking halfway along a flower border – just big enough for a café table, four chairs and a colourful parasol. The border is mainly evergreen rhododendrons and camellias, so it can look dull in summer. However, the chairs, table and parasol create a focal point and give them a reason to take breakfast out into the garden on a sunny day. Instead of the border being something you walk past, it’s become somewhere you walk to.
So when I got tired of the veg-growing area looking a mess, I decided to try the same trick.
This time we didn’t even buy anything new.
We had a small garden table re-purposed from an old sewing machine stand, and a set of eight garden chairs that looked fine as a six.
I tidied away the pots, old sacks of manure and general clutter that had accumulated beside the sheds.
We moved the small garden table, creating a small seating area for two overlooking the veg beds.
We didn’t need to do any hard landscaping here, either, as it had a wide gravel path.
One gardening trend that emerged strongly last year was the idea of bringing the veg-growing area into mainstream garden design.
For centuries, people have tried to hide their productive gardens behind walls or round corners, but today’s gardens aren’t big enough to have a separate vegetable garden.
year as it flowers on “old wood”.
At Great Dixter, they cut some Cotinus to the ground every spring to enjoy the best foliage, and they leave others to flower.
But if you’ve only got one bush, you’ll have to choose.
Depending on where you live and what your spring has been like, there may still be time to prune your roses.
Roses should be pruned before their new leaves start to appear.
If you prune them too late, you
Every square foot of space is precious, so even areas that are primarily practical and for food growing can be pretty places where you enjoy spending time.
In some ways, this reflects the interiors trend of the late 20th century.
Kitchens used to be dingy, practical places, with little money spent on how they looked. Now the kitchen is the heart of the home and is probably the place where people spend the most time – and the most money, making it look good. We’ve also moved a sundial from elsewhere in the garden and placed it in the centre of the four vegetable beds.
Giving the beds a central focal point as well as a seating area has made that part of the garden feel like a separate garden area of its own.
I could turn it into a cutting garden, a cottage garden or even call it a “potager” instead of the “veg beds”.
• Visit Alexandra’s blog online at www.themiddlesizedgarden.co.uk.
may prune off this year’s flowers.
However, you can snip off dead or crossed stems at any time, so if the roses are bursting into leaf already, then give them a minimal prune.
And, of course, you can prune any spring-flowering shrubs, such as weigela, forsythia or azaleas, as soon as they finish flowering.