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We moved house last year, and now that all the internal jobs are mainly done we've been starting to focus a bit more on the garden. The front garden was mainly box hedge, and unfortunately a large chunk of it had box blight and had to be taken out. The rest looked really scruffy and was not growing well. We were then left with a choice of what to do with it - fill in the gaps, or start afresh. We opted for the latter! Even the healthy box didn't look very good... its roots were above the soil level in most places, and the soil level was above the level of the path so adding new topsoil would have been difficult.
I'm saying 'we' a lot, but actually I was just the brains and not the brawn since I'm recovering from spinal surgery
So after ripping out all the box we cleaned up the soil. There were a lot of stones and roots lurking about, but after a good tidy and weeding the soil actually looked to be in good condition. There are two nice standard holly trees which we have kept in place, but the larger of the two needs a good prune - hopefully we'll have time for that next week.
I liked the layout of the box hedge, so we decided to replace some of it - around the path, and in front of the windows. We needed 150 in total and we managed to find them on Amazon of all places (!) for £200. They were advertised as being 15-25cm tall, and unfortunately they were all on the smaller end of that scale! Still, it will be nice to watch them grow. The rest of the garden will be shrubs, and ultimately we might cover it over with stones. There are some tall lime trees nearby and cleaning up leaves can be a real hassle in autumn so having large stones over the soil should mean we lose less soil when picking up the leaves.
These are the shrubs we got:
Rhododendron 'Cunningham's White'
Californian lilac (Ceanothus thyrsiflorus 'Skylark')
Japanese maple (Acer palmatum 'Marlo PBR)
Fuchsia 'Mrs Popple'
Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea 'Midwinter Fire')
Kohehu (Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Tom Thumb')
Evergreen azalea - Geisha Purple (Rhododendron 'Fumiko')
Greater periwinkle (Vinca major 'Variegata')
Juniperus scopulorum 'Skyrocket'
Around the bottom of the juniper we are going to plant some fairly compact lavender, I just need to pop down to the nursery and pick some up.
Here are some photos! The shrubs are a little small at the moment, but we didn't want to overplant as some of them have the potential to be quite big. The flowers will be a mix of whites, blues, purples and pinks, and I've made sure there are some pretty shrubs in winter too. Can't wait to see how it looks over time!
This is me standing in the middle, starting from looking to the left of the front door and turning around anti-clockwise.
I'm saying 'we' a lot, but actually I was just the brains and not the brawn since I'm recovering from spinal surgery
So after ripping out all the box we cleaned up the soil. There were a lot of stones and roots lurking about, but after a good tidy and weeding the soil actually looked to be in good condition. There are two nice standard holly trees which we have kept in place, but the larger of the two needs a good prune - hopefully we'll have time for that next week.
I liked the layout of the box hedge, so we decided to replace some of it - around the path, and in front of the windows. We needed 150 in total and we managed to find them on Amazon of all places (!) for £200. They were advertised as being 15-25cm tall, and unfortunately they were all on the smaller end of that scale! Still, it will be nice to watch them grow. The rest of the garden will be shrubs, and ultimately we might cover it over with stones. There are some tall lime trees nearby and cleaning up leaves can be a real hassle in autumn so having large stones over the soil should mean we lose less soil when picking up the leaves.
These are the shrubs we got:
Rhododendron 'Cunningham's White'
Californian lilac (Ceanothus thyrsiflorus 'Skylark')
Japanese maple (Acer palmatum 'Marlo PBR)
Fuchsia 'Mrs Popple'
Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea 'Midwinter Fire')
Kohehu (Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Tom Thumb')
Evergreen azalea - Geisha Purple (Rhododendron 'Fumiko')
Greater periwinkle (Vinca major 'Variegata')
Juniperus scopulorum 'Skyrocket'
Around the bottom of the juniper we are going to plant some fairly compact lavender, I just need to pop down to the nursery and pick some up.
Here are some photos! The shrubs are a little small at the moment, but we didn't want to overplant as some of them have the potential to be quite big. The flowers will be a mix of whites, blues, purples and pinks, and I've made sure there are some pretty shrubs in winter too. Can't wait to see how it looks over time!
This is me standing in the middle, starting from looking to the left of the front door and turning around anti-clockwise.
