Before, after, and in-between

This weekend I was lucky enough to see two design projects near completion. Both have just been newly planted, or very nearly so, and so will really start to look their best next summer when the plants put on some growth, but the transformation is nonetheless pretty exciting.

This is the original space. This raised area of lawn is part of a larger garden, and the clients were keen to create an attractive space just outside the kitchen. It's a sunny, south-facing spot (when it's not a dreary cloudy day) and the clients wanted somewhere to sit outside on long summer evenings. 

This is the layout we came up with - strongly geometric, and making the most of a small space. As is often the case there were a few tweaks as the project progressed, but this is essentially the plan for the finished product (the gate you can see in the photos is on the right hand side of the plan). 

Construction was underway fairly swiftly, but then we had the wettest drought on record:

We did momentarily consider turning the whole area into a swimming pool.

I'm happy to report though that the garden is now very nearly finished, much to everyone's delight:

The clients were keen to incorporate some water into the space, which isn't always easy in a small spot, but it really adds another dimension if you can fit it in. I love the sound of it, and it's always good to add some movement into a design, whether with airy, grassy plants or some gently flowing water. 

Lighting is often thought of as an 'extra' in a garden, but particularly in a space so close to the house, which is specifically designed to be enjoyed in the evenings, it makes a real difference and definitely enhances your enjoyment of the garden. Once the planting grows up the border lights will gently illuminate the foliage and create a warm and cosy atmosphere.

I'm hoping to pay this garden another visit in the spring and summer to catch spring bulbs in full bloom and see how it looks when the raised beds have filled out a bit. I'm pleased to report that the clients are delighted with their new garden so far, although I think we were all briefly tempted by the swimming pool...!

Windowboxes: the good, the bad, and the ugly

The common-or-garden windowbox: Easily achieved, but not to be recommended

I am excited to have, this very afternoon, launched my new windowbox service (you can find out about it on my website here). As a keen gardener and garden designer, I have an embarrassing tendency to give people's front gardens a good look as I stroll past, and this summer I have noticed an abundance of sad, generally dead or dying windowboxes. I have decided to do make the world a better place, one windowbox at a time.

The problem with windowboxes is that they're very easy to get started, but not so easy to keep going (I'm sure there's a nice analogy there with diets, or exercise regimes). You pop down to B&Q one sunny weekend, and buy it all: the box, the compost, some plants that are looking good. You plant it up and proudly display it outside (slightly frustrated that you didn't get the next size up, because the box now looks rather small on your capacious windowsill). You appreciate it as you come and go for the next few days. You may even remember to water it for a week or so. But sooner or later, after a few baking hot summer days when you've had better things to do, the petunias start to droop. The geranium leaves slowly turn an alarming shade of brown, and soon enough the only plant growing with any gusto is a solitary enterprising dandelion. Soon enough you have a container that looks like it was planted by Wednesday Adams.

Windowboxes, like any smallish container, have a serious drawback for plants: they simply dry out too quickly. My windowboxes all have water-retaining crystals added (not, as you might imagine, a hormonal woman's worst nightmare, but a handy horticultural product that tides plants over in drought emergencies), and I always ensure the container is as big as possible - partly this looks better, and gives you more space for plants, and partly a bigger container dries out more slowly than a small one.

Plants that are bought when already in bloom, which is always tempting when standing in the garden centre, are inevitably closer to the end of their flowering period than plants that are only in bud, but any successful containerised planting scheme will need regular attention and topping-up. I am therefore offering a maintenance service, to come back and make sure all windowboxes are looking their best. 

In the spirit of research, I am intending to photograph good and bad examples of windowboxes to add to the blog. I forsee that photographing beautiful examples will be a doddle, but I'm slightly nervous about how I politely persuade home-owners that I really want to snap their thoroughly dead plants - avoiding being both offensive and suspicious may be a challenge. If the 'what not to do' examples all seem to have been taken by torchlight, you'll know why. Although that really will look suspicious if I get caught...

Cocktails of colour

Recently I have been having fun with the results of zooming in on garden photos to try and identify certain plants. I had this delightfully happy accident whilst studying Joe Swift's Chelsea 2012 garden (which my regular reader [hi there] will know I was a big fan of). Verbascum 'Petra' and Iris ('Sultan's Palace'?), with a haze of grasses or fennel or something breezing through the lot. It makes me want a Tequila Sunrise. Which doesn't happen often (cough, cough). 

Slugs. Yuk.

It’s funny how your own garden tends to become a model of what you think is ‘normal’ in the gardening world. I once took a turn round a beautiful garden near Bath (Ridley’s Cheer, a lovely B&B, if you want to pay them a visit), and was completely in awe of the owner who spouted Latin at me for half an hour, totally confident in what plant was what, as well as how to pronounce it. Generously, and reassuringly, she pointed out that it’s easy to identify plants in your own garden – you bought them, or lovingly raised them from seed, or inherited them from kind friends and neighbours. It is far more challenging to look round someone else’s patch and confidently name all their plants (an excuse I have been using extensively ever since).

There are no words.

Anyway, Latin names are not my topic for this post. Before we moved to London I had never understood why people make such a fuss about slugs. All that time and money spent on controlling them, all the endless conversations about little-known tips and secrets. To be frank, I thought these people were all mildly obsessive and best given a large berth.

But now I see the error of my ways, and I have started to actively seek these people out in case they can help me with my problem. For nearly everything we have planted in this new garden has been eaten to the ground within hours of us returning inside and wiping our boots. I started to get a little paranoid and wonder if the neighbours were doing it to spite us. There are few things more depressing for a gardener than coming outside in the morning to ‘do the rounds’, to find one solitary bean seedling remaining out of forty planted out the night before. I can think of virtually nothing that these slimy monsters haven’t devoured.

So I had no choice but to take some serious action. I have spent a fortune on greengardener.co.uk (highly recommended), and I thought you’d like a run-down of our experiences. They are not entirely happy.

Slug Buggers

Excellent name. The wrath that gardeners feel towards these gastropods (I hate that name; like they are gastronomically devouring my hostas, which of course they are) evokes some unusually violent urges, to which this product certainly appeals. And it’s a very nice idea too. Wool pellets, wildlife-friendly and biodegradable (adding a mulch to your soil as a bonus), are applied round the base of plants, or in a ring round, say, a bed of lettuces. Slugs don’t like moving over them, so the plants within the magic circle stay safe. We had a modicum of success with these, but not enough to make us confident in using them for something special, and they don’t work brilliantly after rain (which is something of a problem in current conditions). I think our slugs are super-strength.

Slug X Slug Trap

A beer trap, but better. The little wells for the beer are part of a complex (if you’re a slug) network of passages, and apparently the aroma of the beer confuses the slugs (my co-gardener empathises, he tells me) and they wander round the trap for up to 10 days in a drunken stupor. We caught a lot of slugs and snails. We had to empty the trap sometimes more than once a day. The results are truly revolting, but it feels very good to kill so many slugs. (Make sure you do kill them though – chucking them over a hedge will be a very short-term solution).

Copper tape

An oldie but a goodie. Slugs coming into contact with the copper are given a little electric shock, and dutifully reverse away from your precious plants. In my experience this works faultlessly when stuck around pots, so long as there is no other access onto the plant. We had our hostas up on a low wall, against a fence, and it seems the little blighters climbed up the fence and then onto the plant, thereby bypassing the tape altogether. Needless to say the hostas have been moved to safer territory. The other thing to bear in mind is that the tape is obviously totally ineffective against slugs already in the soil (they live underground too, just to make things more difficult).

You can also use copper grease, which I think is used for something mechanical and you can buy it from Halfords etc, but I would only use it on pots you don’t ever move, because it is very mucky stuff and you don’t want to absent-mindedly pick a pot up and find yourself covered in grease.

Nematodes

Another very satisfying way of waging war, and totally harmless to wildlife (very important to me, or I’d just have bombed the place with slug pellets weeks ago). Microscopic parasites that come in powder form, which you mix in a watering can and add to the soil. The slugs and snails then somehow absorb the nematodes through their skin and are killed from the inside out. Lovely. Nematodes are best applied early in the season and then at regular intervals, and unfortunately they do need reasonably warm temperatures to work best, which may explain their slightly disappointing performance this year. I would recommend this method for any garden, so long as you keep on top of the application schedule.

Night raids

Not very technical, but free and astonishingly effective. Go out armed with a torch, especially on a wet night, and prepare to be disgusted by the sheer numbers sliming their way across your garden. Pick them off by hand and dispose of however you see fit.

Tidy up

One of the most effective things we did was trimming the overgrown ivy off the fences (well, my co-gardener did it, but I definitely supervised). After we found dozens of snails hiding amongst it there was no argument that it had to go. It also gives us a lot more space for planting, which is always good. Likewise, areas of long grass are best kept well away from planting beds – you don’t want to give the destructive creatures a nice hiding place conveniently located next to your seedlings.

Coffee and grapefruit

I can’t help feeling that this is merely like giving your slugs a continental breakfast, but coffee grounds sprinkled on the ground does apparently deter slugs. The Garden magazine this month says the best thing to do is make a solution of coffee and water and spray it on the garden, but it also says this is illegal. I can’t understand why, so if you know please enlighten me.

I have also been told that empty grapefruits, cut in half and placed like a little dome on the ground, make a good trap. We caught a couple of slugs, but really when you have as many as we do that could well be just coincidence. We also attracted a lot of ants, and our upstairs neighbours thought we had taken to chucking our breakfast out onto the garden (a kind of compost-heap without the heap perhaps?), so we haven’t continued with this particular method.

I am desperate for any other ideas or traditional remedies. We can’t take any more depressing mornings witnessing the carnage of last night’s rampaging midnight feast around the garden. Please do let me know if you have any thoughts.

Best bits of Chelsea on a hot and crowded visit

A belated post, I know. Blame the fact that it was nearly 30 degrees when I visited the RHS Chelsea Flower Show this year and very crowded. I don't cope well with heat or crowds, so it has taken me 2 full weeks to recover...

Perhaps I was wilting like a bloom on a scorching August afternoon, but I wasn't as excited by Chelsea this year as I had hoped. Many of the show gardens seemed rather samey and I had to agree with whoever the wise person was who said the displays in the Great Pavilion are the real show-stoppers.

However, here are some of my favourite bits:

Joe Swift's Homebase/Teenage Cancer Trust garden hadn't leapt off the page when I'd perused the gardens before my visit, but in reality I loved it. Not necessarily what I'd want for my own garden, but I really admired his commitment to a colour scheme, and I liked the framed views created by the cedar structures, which changed (obviously) depending on where you stood - not a hugely original idea in itself, but the cedar sat more happily in the garden than some of the concrete or metal versions I've seen in other show gardens in the past.

Not my best photograph, but that shouldn't detract from the wonderful DMZ (demilitarised zone) Forbidden Garden, inspired by the space created by the Korean conflict 60 years ago. All the showgardens were, of course, very pretty. But I felt that for some of them that was their only recommendation - still an achievement, but I wanted something more. Garden design is often described as an art, but great art is not just about creating a pretty picture. This garden clearly had a strong concept behind it, and had been designed to exemplify it in every way. Everything made sense and was there for a reason. I particularly enjoyed the use of water: 'A stream flows through the garden, defying the barriers of human conflict and depicting the feelings of love and tension that the designer believes co-exist in the DMZ', according to the show catalogue. Clever, eh?

I think that's enough for one post, so if I can continue to overcome the memories of heat and crowds I shall offer another post separately.

Mad about Maples

In between torrential downpours last week I managed to dash round a rather soggy Hatfield to enjoy the garden in spring. In a lovely woodland glade, full of cowslips and bluebells pushing up through long grass, were a number of Acer palmatum, their new leaves positively bursting with freshness.

I adore Acers. They have to be among the most elegant of trees, and I love the way their fine foliage quakes in the breeze, and the dappled shade they cast beneath their delicate crowns (forgive me for going all poetic). 

In our otherwise unremarkable front garden (ahem, still working on that), is another one, this time a deep moody burgundy.  This one I suspect is some version of Acer palmatum var. dissectum, judging by the finely divided leaves. The picture doesn't really do it justice - the colour seems rather flat, when in reality it is bright and glowing, particularly in the sunshine.  A lot of garden designers find purple-leaved plants difficult to place in a garden, and it is true that they do not always mix well with an otherwise harmonious palette of greens. The Acer, however, sits very happily with the other plants around it - limey Euphorbias, sweet little forget-me-nots (Myosotis, if you want the official name), and Centranthus ruber (the pinky-red or white valerian you see growing out of every nook and cranny in the countryside). I think the texture is important here, as it gives the colour a very multi-dimensional look (just like all those adverts for hair dye are always going on about).

Acers are often thought of as excellent trees for autumn foliage displays, and I'm certainly not going to argue with that (maples play a starring role in the famous colours of New England in the fall). But they more than earn their place in the garden earlier on in the year and deserve to be much admired. As well as in woodland glades at stately homes, they are also perfect for small gardens and even containers, so there's really no excuse not to add one to your life.

Spring in the City

When we moved to London from the sticks, I had the feeling we were moving to a mass of sprawling concrete. Goodbye, soft tussocks of mossy grass. Farewell, well-tended front gardens brimming with old-fashioned favourites. Hello, buddleja growing out of railway bridges. 

I'm delighted to say that this was a ridiculous and foolish assumption. On my way to the station I have to stand on tiptoes to fully appreciate the beautiful lilac bush that wafts its heavenly scent my way. This morning I took a stroll along the A20 (to the Post Office, not because I thought it would be pleasant) and was constantly stopping to admire the flowers. Here are a few of the sights (taken on my phone, and it was windy, so excuse the quality):

Lovely lilac. Not the one I usually stop to smell, as this morning that one had the distinct aroma of marijuana. I cannot explain this fact, at least not using my horticultural knowledge. 

Beautiful blossom (hope you're enjoying the aliteration). Blossom identification is a real personal weakness, so I shall only venture that this is cherry. Any further information is very welcome.

They even have bluebells in the city! Bins in the background for added urban authenticity. 

Seductive ceanothus, which has been tirelessly putting on a rather show-stopping display now for several weeks. 

So it seems there's plenty to keep me interested. And I don't even mind buddleja really - I quite admire the way it clings on to the tiniest crevice, and the butterflies and bees love it. I did once hear it described as the pigeon of the garden design world, which seemed rather cruel to buddleja and pigeons alike. Expect a post championing one or both over the next few weeks when the butterfly bush makes its entrance. 

Who says kitchen tables are for eating off?

Food preparation and consumption is becoming something of a challenge.

Loving your Lawn

I am in two minds about lawns. There is something wonderful about the perfect stripes of a pristine, well-maintained and weed-free lawn. It takes vast amounts of time and effort to achieve, but you can so easily imagine yourself taking tea on the lawn, perhaps engaging in idle gossip or falling asleep with a good book on an idyllic summer afternoon. 

The opposite extreme is the first photo, which I'm not (too) ashamed to tell you is my own lawn (we've only moved in recently - don't judge me too harshly). It is a riot of...well, weeds. I can't put a designer spin on that - daisies and dandelions, and bigger, peskier plants at the edges that are constantly trying to encroach on the ever-diminishing space at the centre. It looks pretty gorgeous when the sun shines on it and the daisies all crane their necks to make the most of its rays. I particularly like it at the moment because all the seeds we've planted over the last few weeks are not yet in flower, so the unkempt lawn is the star of the show (I know, that's not saying much). The one thing my lawn is missing is clover - beloved by bees and really very pretty, but I suppose it's sod's law that the one weed you really want is the one you have to go and buy.

Less-than-perfect lawns are good for wildlife and save you masses of time and money trying to achieve the unachievable. In periods of drought and hosepipe bans no lawn looks great, but it's amazing how grass is the first thing to perk up at the first few spots of rain. 

I'm well aware that for all my eulogising about carefree, bohemian lawns, in a few weeks' time I will have had enough and will venture outside armed with horrible sprays and wielding a menacing fork. But for now, I'll be lounging around making daisy chains. 

Spring bulbs and how to use them

Saffron-coloured stamens in a sunlit crocus

I could not have been more pleased to see the first spring bulbs opening their petals this weekend to catch a few precious rays of winter sunshine. Perhaps I have been particularly unobservant, or maybe it's unusually cold round here, but I've been longing for them for weeks to no avail. Happily, this weekend they were out in force (well, not quite in force, but out nonetheless). I sometimes find the big brash brassy trumpets of daffs lining the roadsides and sprouting all over parks and gardens a little too much, but the dainty earlier bulbs are the perfect way to ease yourself out of winter and in, finally, to spring. 

My favourite way to use these bulbs in designs is very naturalistic and unaffected: scatter a load beneath a tree (an early-flowering fruit tree is perfect, as the bare crown lets light through to the ground below and the blossom creates a stunning spring picture almost too good for words), plant where they fall, and leave them to happily reproduce and spread to create a carpet of early spring colour. You can get all sorts of interesting and unusual (and expensive) varieties, but if you're going for the carpet look you just need to bulk buy a cheap and cheerful sort. One colour looks terribly stylish (purple crocuses, for instance), but on this occasion I'm a fan of the 'explosion in a seed factory' look, and think the more the merrier. A range of different bulbs will help to keep the interest going a bit longer too, as different species should flower over different weeks. Try cyclamen, whose marbled silvery leaves are just as pretty as their petals.

Sadly most of us don't have the space to dedicate part of the lawn to an ever-increasing display of spring flowers, but if that's the case for you, don't fear: the tiny, delicate nature of these plants makes them ideal for containers, and by bringing them closer to eye level in a window-box or similar you can enjoy their finer details all the better. My favourites for this sort of treatment are the irises - particularly little Iris reticulata which comes in a number of different varieties. These two are 'Katharine Hodgkin' and 'Joyce ('Joyce' being the darker, more violet flower).  

They're only between 10 and 15cm high, but the colours and markings are so pretty that they more than deserve some special attention. Plant them en masse in some sharply drained soil in a container, top with pea shingle, and enjoy. Here I would advise restraint in colours, unless you're feeling confident - you can see that the two options above are not natural partners. 

The only problem with spring bulbs, as with so much in gardening, is that once you see them in someone else's garden it's too late to do anything about getting them for yourself until next year. The only thing to do is make a note in your diary for September/October, and look out for bulb sales at local garden centres, in nurseries, and online. If you're very organised you can make a note and take pictures of particularly good combinations, but then you'd need to be organised enough to know where you put them in 6 months' time, which is an altogether more thorny problem and not something I'm qualified to advise on...

Decision, decisions

I have recently moved into a new flat, which, amazingly for where I am, has both a front and a back garden. Both need quite a bit of work, and now the days are getting longer (and the fear is setting in of people seeing a garden designer's garden looking a mess) I am pondering the best way to go ahead. The front garden is top of my list, because it's what everyone sees, and in the colder months even I will see it more than the back garden. I like to work in the front room, looking out onto the street, and a bed full of weeds and leggy shrubs is not inspiring. Here is it looking particularly, almost impressively, tatty.

In designing my own garden I am faced with the dilemma that every small garden presents. I want something that looks smart, lush, and green all year, but that also has bursts of seasonal colour depending on the season. The difficulty is that there's just not enough space for both. Herbaceous perennials will die down in the winter to leave bare earth (swiftly followed by weeds), and evergreens will take up too much space to let the decorative plants do their thing. I don't want bedding plants and endless maintenance, and I don't want a practical but boring carpet of Euonymus fortunei. I am swiftly become my most difficult client. 

However, I may have hit upon a solution. The windows overlooking this sorry sight have large sills just begging for window boxes. I am pondering a green bed full of native ferns to look good all year - they'll complement the existing plummy Acer and not demand too much of their owner, with the colour and seasonal interest provided by the window boxes. I can manage to change the planting in those 4ish times a year, surely. 

So now I'm dreaming of what to put in the window boxes. Thompson and Morgan have some lovely non-climbing sweet peas, which I am imagining romantically trailing down the boxes, their scent seducing passers-by and the lovely soft colours looking good from inside and out. 

Now the only thing to do is get outside and get to work 

on making things as welcoming as possible for my 

new plants. I fear that choosing the flowers might have 

been the easy bit...