Friday, April 27, 2012
Things are changing!
There's been a few changes in my garden, more information on that in another post coming soon.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Welcome to my garden
My gardening journey started quite late in life due to other preoccupations like work, drinking and dancing and generally enjoying life! I moved from a very large city to a small county town for work purposes and found myself living next door to a really good gardener. Shame forced me to look more carefully at my garden and to my surprise I found I actually enjoyed it. Like most things in my life I embraced this new found activity with a passion and it could now be said that I am a bit of a gardening fanatic.
This first real garden was challenging, a small courtyard area, surrounded by hedging and buildings and west facing with sandy soil. At the same time I was also spending many weekends in Suffolk at a lovely cottage with a large garden almost completely surrounded by very large trees and with heavy clay soil. Both of these gardens provided me with the opportunity to really learn about what works and what doesn't. The main learning curve being "always buy the right plant for the right place."
Having really been caught by the gardening bug by this time and having learnt by my successes and failures in my two previous gardens I decided to move again but this time to find a garden with a house! Not an easy task. Why do estate agents say large garden when they really mean slightly bigger than a handkerchief!!
I finally moved from the town to the country-side to my current home, a cottage with a large open garden with fabulous views over Mid-Wales. A north facing plot at the back with reasonable soil with some clay in places the garden provides plenty of challenge. The previous owners had planted plenty of shrubs, trees and plants, many of which were well overdue for a pruning! Many are simple not where I want them.
My first challenge was to do nothing -difficult for someone who likes to act impulsivley! I decided that I needed to watch the garden for my first year and do the minimum of keeping it tidy. This would enable me to see what was good to keep and what I really wanted to change. This blog is part of the record of the first years journey of discovery, which has been fascinating. Surprises all the way and only one or two catastrophies so far!
The year of waiting and watching has also enabled me to think about the changes I want to make and rethink plans again and again. As the garden is much larger than my town garden it does require a huge amount of work to keep it looking reasonable but with the help of a willing ex farmer who has gone into the garden maintainance business I am able to at least keep the hedges that surround the garden and the grass in decent shape.
Some of my more ambitious plans include moving the pond, developing the small orchard, removing a large old shed, relocating a new one and creating larger beds.
Come back and check for regular update on my progress.
This first real garden was challenging, a small courtyard area, surrounded by hedging and buildings and west facing with sandy soil. At the same time I was also spending many weekends in Suffolk at a lovely cottage with a large garden almost completely surrounded by very large trees and with heavy clay soil. Both of these gardens provided me with the opportunity to really learn about what works and what doesn't. The main learning curve being "always buy the right plant for the right place."
Having really been caught by the gardening bug by this time and having learnt by my successes and failures in my two previous gardens I decided to move again but this time to find a garden with a house! Not an easy task. Why do estate agents say large garden when they really mean slightly bigger than a handkerchief!!
I finally moved from the town to the country-side to my current home, a cottage with a large open garden with fabulous views over Mid-Wales. A north facing plot at the back with reasonable soil with some clay in places the garden provides plenty of challenge. The previous owners had planted plenty of shrubs, trees and plants, many of which were well overdue for a pruning! Many are simple not where I want them.My first challenge was to do nothing -difficult for someone who likes to act impulsivley! I decided that I needed to watch the garden for my first year and do the minimum of keeping it tidy. This would enable me to see what was good to keep and what I really wanted to change. This blog is part of the record of the first years journey of discovery, which has been fascinating. Surprises all the way and only one or two catastrophies so far!
The year of waiting and watching has also enabled me to think about the changes I want to make and rethink plans again and again. As the garden is much larger than my town garden it does require a huge amount of work to keep it looking reasonable but with the help of a willing ex farmer who has gone into the garden maintainance business I am able to at least keep the hedges that surround the garden and the grass in decent shape.
Some of my more ambitious plans include moving the pond, developing the small orchard, removing a large old shed, relocating a new one and creating larger beds.
Come back and check for regular update on my progress.
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