My garden
In the early spring of 2022, I had my own garden landscaped. The garden and planting were designed by me (of course!) with the landscaping by Nick Smith Garden Construction, whose attention to detail and real collaboration were just what I wanted.
Planting in the new pond is a combination of new plants, like this white ragged robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi ‘White Robin’), and plants from my previous pond.
This is the view from the kitchen window.
View down the long pond from the wooden bench. Definitely the best place to enjoy morning coffee and the rising sun!
I love this picture! The lawn is already settling in and the dark maroon leaves of the Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’ are gorgeous. All the plants in the raised beds are from my previous garden - I planted what I could and gave away the rest (quite a lot of plants!). There’s still a few things for me to do, but as they say, ‘a garden is never finished!’.
Precision paving from Nick!
Self binding gravel, setts and paving risers in the top half of the garden. This is the result of collaborative working and I love it!
Tulip ‘Hakuun’ looking bright in the lower spring light levels
The beautiful sandstone paving goes along the back and down the side of the house. The garden already seems brighter.
One of my new trees, the double white flowered hawthorn, Crataegus laevigata ‘Plena’, which was absolutely covered in flowers and pollinators!
The long curving ‘S’ shaped pond is in place and part filled. There’s a beach at one end to allow creatures to leave the pond easily, and shelves for marginal plants.
The raised bed plants are filling out quickly, and look great against the dark grey (‘Rumpled Velvet’) of the walls.
Checking the depth of the deepest part of the pond - 50cm to allow the frogs to over winter safely.
There’s a lot going on in the garden! The 3 raised beds are filled with soil from digging out the pond and compost from my previous garden, so I didn’t need to bring in any new material.
Look at those lovely lines!
It has to get worse before it gets better!
Checking for frogs as the old pond drains away. They were fast movers, but Martyn became known at the ‘frog wrangler’, carefully catching them in a plant pot and taking them to safety. They are now finding their way back to the new pond. I saved their frogspawn in large buckets and there’s been so many tadpoles this year!
The only things left from my old garden are the greenhouse and the fig tree behind it. It’s always a bit of a shock when you see your old garden disappear, but I could already see how much bigger the garden would look - really good when it’s only a small garden!