Welcome to my Garden, No 1

Welcome to my garden.

It’s not very big and like most gardens at this time of year needs a bit of attention. A few years ago I managed a garden of about half an acre, I loved gardening,  but since then I’ve moved out of a fairly big house with a big garden and into a much smaller first floor apartment with a modest little garden. I’ve also developed a few health problems which don’t allow me to do the things I used to, no heavy digging, pruning and weeding for me any more. Last year I realised I was going to have to think about how I could manage my garden in the long term, by myself.

 

I decided to keep the driveway because it’s useful for my daughters to park on, (I don’t drive), it’s quite useful for the grandchildren to play with bikes and scooters and it’s level enough to put the BBQ and my chair on. I added another small paved area because it cut down on the amount of grass to cut and it’s a perfect size for the garden table and chairs. My garden is a bit of an unusual shape, it’s like a triangle with a flat base and two slightly curves sides. The driveway forms the flat base and the apex of this curved triangle is a difficult to get to area that’s always in the shade of an old crab apple tree. My solution to this awkward little space was to partition it off and do absolutely nothing with it.

 

 

I acquired a few old bluebell bulbs and threw them under the crab apple tree, any plant cuttings, dead plants, old plants or otherwise unwanted plants were tossed in that general direction. I emptied all my grass cuttings over it and occasionally scattered potato peelings and old tea bags over this growing heap. Now one year on this little space is my wildlife garden where my first batch of bluebells are dying off, birds sing in the tree and I hope to see butterflies galore later in the year. I’d quite like a couple of nesting boxes in the tree and maybe a small bird bath in the middle.

 

 

The next thing I had to tackle was the garden beds all around the grass and both sides of the driveway. They had to go, I knew maintaining garden beds with digging and hoeing and planting wasn’t going to be an option and so, they were filled in, covered in stone chips and strewn with pots. I thought I could probably continue to manage a container garden so this seemed like a good idea.  I also extended this new area of stone chips and containers out from where the flower bed used to be to include some of what was grass. I thought less grass to mow would be a good idea. I did keep one tiny flower bed and that was because it was so heavily planted it needs no maintenance,  any way and it is very, very pretty.

 

 

Actually doing this took most of last summer; there was a certain amount of irony to what I was doing. I was completely remodelling my garden to turn it into an easy maintenance   garden because I couldn’t manage it as it was; but in doing this I spent the whole summer doing more heavy manual labour than I had done in quite a while!! As it turns out I made the right decision, what was difficult last year would have been virtually impossible this year and completely impossible in future years, so it seems my instincts to just press on and get it done were right.  I now have my remodelled garden in place and ready to enjoy through out an (almost ) maintenance free summer. There are just a few small problems that need sorting and all will be well in my little garden.

 

 

For a start; my driveway is becoming covered in weeds, in the past I have been quite happy to go out with a hoe every couple of weeks and clear it. Now I need another solution, I’m not that happy with conventional weed killers or path clearers, I don’t like the idea of all those toxic chemicals in my garden so if any one knows of an alternative eco friendly way of maintaining a plant free driveway please, please tell me. The one area of my weed infested driveway that has a permanent reprieve is the bit around the gates, I couldn’t possible destroy this pretty little colony of flowering clover. I can’t imagine how it’s managing to grow like that through cracked concrete but it is and I’m certainly not going to kill it.

 

 

The second small problem I have encountered is that some of my container plants died over the winter. I wrapped the pots in bubble wrap and plastic in an attempt to prevent frost damage to the roots. The plants were well fed and watered through out the summer and drainage was ok so I’m not sure why some didn’t make it and others did. Most of my containers had herbs or strongly scented plants like honeysuckle, jasmine or lavender. The ordinary garden herbs like mint and rosemary survived really well but I lost two or three lavender plants and my honeysuckle. I intend to replace them with similar or the same plants but I should hate to lose them again this winter so if any one has any ideas keeping my container plants alive through out the winter, please let me know