My First Flower

[riberside]

Hello all,

After years of not understanding why some people spend most of their spare time working in the garden, I have now been bitten by the bug and have recently reclaimed two borders from the lawn in the front garden and planted some shrubs, perennials and bulbs.

This morning I was rewarded with my first flower, a Vinca Minor, aka Lesser Periwinkle. It's not supposed to bloom till early spring so it may suffer in the next frost. However, for now, I'm feeling pleased with myself and thought I would like to share my joy with like-minded people. :)

[sue1002]

I wouldn't worry about not getting any more flowers, they are tough plants and spread anywhere and everywhere and it comes back every year. We have Vinca major here which spread in from next door, it gets everywhere and I've spent the last few years trying to get rid of it.

[digger]

The flower does look very nice which part of the country are you from? tell us a bit about your garden, you know how big, how cold/wet/dry/shady etc.. and welcome to the forum

[riberside]

Thanks digger.

I live in Buckinghamshire and have now updated my profile to display this.

The house faces north so the front garden is open to the elements and is in the shadow of the house for much of the day. The soil is neutral, has a good texture and was fairly easy to dig (for which I am very grateful :) ) though I believe it gets very dry in summer, probably due to the proximity of two trees in my neighbour's garden.

The garden is 5.5m wide by 7.5m long with a 70cm border along one side and a curved border varying between about 1m and 2m across the front, the rest being laid to lawn.

My next project is the back garden which faces south. I've just started clearing it and thinking about a design. I haven't made any decisions yet but I'm looking forward to buying some of the sun-loving plants which weren't suitable for the north-facing front garden.

[digger]

Hi riberside, I imagine that you would have a climate a little milder than up here in Lancashire. In the back garden you will be able to have a really good choice of plants, do you fancy some big exotics?. Up here my soil is heavyclay (it's the same for everyone in Lancs) but it's easy to improve with plenty of muck. I think the most exotic" plant I have outside is a grape vine boskoop glory" it is in a sheltered spot but I think it may have been a mistake planting it outside. I do have a greenhouse but it is bursting at the seams!

[riberside]

Morning digger,

I agree about the climate. I come from East Yorkshire and it's certainly milder here than there.

My plans are a bit sketchy at the moment. The aim is to create a garden which will look good but not require huge amounts of attention on an ongoing basis. I'd like to be able to enjoy pottering but not feel pressured.

My knowledge of plants, their habits and requirements was almost non-existent until a few months ago when I decided to lick the garden into shape. Since then, I've spent many a happy hour wandering around garden centres and pouring over books, CDs and the internet. My attention was primarily focused on plants suitable for the front garden so I moved on whenever I came across a sun-lover. However, it did seem that there were a lot more unsuitable plants than suitable ones so I'll be spoilt for choice for the back garden.

[Miranda]

Welcome riberside,

A lovely garden that is also low maintenance can be a game, but if you go for a mix of shrubs and hardy perennials that would be a good start. The shrubs will fill in for the background and the perennials will pretty much look after themselves once they're settled.

There are so many perennials to choose from, which can make it a difficult choice to start with, but you can always swap and change. Most of them need little attention apart from being divided every three years or so - this also allows you to make new plants - and a bit of a tidy up every now and then.

Bulbs are another good addition - one of the things I like best about them is that they disappear completely after they've finished and you forget all about them and then you get a nice surprise when they come up again.

[riberside]

Thanks Miranda,

As I said in my first post, shrubs, perennials and bulbs are what I've planted in the front garden. So it looks as if I'm on the right track.

[digger]

Hi riberside, Do you have the complete gardens cd rom? If not it is well worthwhile buying it as an early Christmas gift for yourself On the cd you get all the info you need and once you've put your plants in that you have you will get all the info you need about care and maintenance.

[riberside]

Good advert for the CD digger :)

As it happens, I got it on Tuesday, the day before my first post. That's how I found this site.

It's funny you should mention early Christmas presents. I put the CD and a couple of gardening books on my Christmas list and my husband bought them. I had been resigned to waiting till Christmas but he thought it would be silly to make me wait. Who was I to argue?

So it looks like I'll just have to have something else for Christmas doesn't it? :)

[sue1002]

That's nice of your hubby got you the CD and the books early riberside, if you haven't already got it, the RHS Encyclopedia of Perennials is a good one, I got my copy last year and I still haven't read it all through yet.

When he decides what else to get you, I hope it isn't anything for the kitchen:eek:

[Paul Narramore]

So Riberside, tell us about your back garden. You have to clear is so is/was it a jungle or an established garden you inherited but didn't like? When we moved here thirteen years ago, I inherited a slightly overgrown, mature garden with lots of conifers, many of which were far to close to the house and even leaning over at 45 degrees. I grubbed up many of them and raised the canopies of others to allow more light to the borders around their bases. The viburnums in particular took well to this treatment. Then I began to plant trees before any of the bordesr were planned. As these take the longest to grow, I needed to get them in fast. I planted about one tree a year for the first five or six years, the first being Prunus 'Kanzan, a flowering cherry. These are the best selling tree in the UK and regarded by some as a bit vulgar but when they came to this country in the early 1960s, my mother bought one from Woolworths and it grew to be a monster. The soil was a mere 12" deep on top of solid chalk, my father pollarded every few years, and still it kept flowering each spring. So we have one.

The next tree was Robinia pseudoacacia 'Frisia' , the UK's second favourite and it's easy to see why. When we sit at the bottom of the garden, the setting sun shines through the yellow leaves and it appears the tree is on fire.

The third purchase was Catalpa bignonoides, the Indian Bean Tree, which I saw in full flower in someones garden. So striking was it with it's clusters of wonderful flowers, I had to have one. It flowered for the first time this summer.

So my advice is to get a copy of a book such as TREES FOR YOUR GARDEN by Roy Lancaster (ISBN 0-85638-232-4) and choose away!

[riberside]

Thanks for the advice Sue. Don't worry. My husband wouldn't dare to buy me anything for the kitchen unless I asked for it, but there's no danger of that.

Thanks for your advice too Paul.

I'm afraid I can't blame anyone else for the state of our garden. When we came here 31 years ago it was mostly laid to lawn, with narrow borders around most of edges containing annuals and a few perennials and four fruit trees dotted about. Since we had no interest in gardening, I'm afraid we neglected the borders and the grass gradually took over, along with a few weeds and lots of ivy, which actually looks very pretty but does get everywhere. We have mowed the lawn regularly, applied weed and feed, and pruned the trees but, I'm ashamed to say, that's about it.

My intention is to clear the weeds and ivy and create borders again, this time planted mostly with shrubs, perennials and bulbs. I'll think about your suggestions for trees, though it may be that the four we have are enough for a garden this size.

[Miranda]

It sounds like you've got a big job ahead of you, riberside, but if you can clear some space now, at least you'll be more prepared come spring.

I'd love to see some photos if you have any, expect we all would!

[riberside]

Hi Miranda,

I don't have any photos of the back garden yet. I did think of taking 'before' and 'after' photos but I really don't want to be reminded of the 'before', so I didn't take any. I'll post 'after' photos when there's something to see.

Here is a photo of the front garden the day after planting. You'll see that there are a couple of campanulas in flower, which seem to contradict my opening post. Easy explanation - they were in flower when I bought them so they didn't count.

[Miranda]

Do take 'before' photos! They will show you how much work you've done and are a really useful record.

From what I can see, the plants you have in will spread and should join up after a while. Have you thought about putting in some spring flowering bulbs until that happens? I reckon it would look very pretty.

I have a particular thing about lawn edges - if you creat sharp edges to the lawn it will act as a frame for the rest of the garden and make the whole thing look much better. Keeping the edges neat also stops the grass from growing into the borders.

[Paul Narramore]

Miranda has a 'thing' about lawn edging, and i have a 'thing' about straight borders. Have you given any thoughts to making borders into curved beds? To my mind, they make the garden far more natural although of course a small garden is quite a contrived space. There are plenty of books on garden design out there to give you some ideas. Only last week, I went to our local Oxfam shop and bought a wonderful book HILLIER GARDEN PLANNING by Keith Rushforth, Roderick Griffin and Dennis Woodland (ISBN 0-7153-0181-0) for a mere £2.99. I doubt if I'll ever need to buy another book on the subject. Curved beds do make the mowing just a tad more difficult though.

I also like the jungley-type garden with far, far less grass and more and more trees and shrubs. For me grass is great for the children but once they've grown up and moved on, it's time for the imagination to run riot. Curved cobble paths, bushes you need to push aside to get passed. I just wish I'd moved here twenty years ago rather than thirteen years as my trees would be that more mature. Partly obscured by the neighbours damned sycamores, my flowering cherry has taken years to start to bloom enthusiastically, and the catalpa flowered only for the first time this spring after six or seven years 'thinking about it'.

Get that hosepipe out and those curved beds dug, select some smaller trees if you have no room and enjoy:D

[digger]

On the subject of trees Paul, I have thought that i would like a row of trees across the back garden, they will act as a divider but i don't think i want to plant them all in the ground i would like to have a row of large pots/containers with some nice trees in them, naturally this will mean that they need to be trees that will tolerate being in a container, i do like maples because of the wonderful Autumn colours, but I would only want one or two of them not neccisarily the usual acer palmatum atropurpureum, i have seen a field maple with nice big leaves that may or may not be suitable for a container, and i fancy a stags horn sumach can you perhaps offer up some names of trees that will do ina container all the time, I can use really big containers if needs be and the trees don't have to be minatures, i know grafting can help for container trees i would be grateful if you could maybe suggest some interesting trees that i could then look up, trees with nice bark are good but the only trees i have ever planted are the apples, some beech trees for a hedge at one side of the garden and a hazel contorta that i planted in the right hand border and it now barely visible due to the weigela that i planted too close, do you think the hazel contorta will transplant into a container?

[riberside]

Thanks for your comments and suggestions.

I have planted 250 bulbs and I can't wait to see the magnificent display.

I agree with both Miranda and Paul on the subject of lawn edges and borders.

The original plan was for both borders to be curved and I did lay out the hosepipe (having first soaked it in hot water to make it more flexible - a tip I picked up from Alan Titchmarsh only the previous day). However, with the proportions of the garden, the border along the wall needs to be quite narrow and the curves just looked as if I had cut the edge whilst drunk! So I decided to make that border straight. The other border is curved, though you can't really see that from the angle from which the photo was taken. The back garden is wider so there should be more scope for curves.

The clean lines of the edges got lost during the digging and planting process so the plan is to cut round them again to define them and install strips of lawn edging which has a couple of inches of what looks like carved stone sticking up above the grass. That should make a tidy edge, contain the grass and make strimming easier. The job isn't done yet because my husband, who has volunteered to do it, has been suffering from a sore throat and chesty cough for the past 3 weeks and he's now passed it on to me. So we're taking things easy for a while.

[digger]

Well 250 bulbs that will make a spectacular display , be sure to take some pics for us.

[Paul Narramore]

"suffering from a sore throat and chesty cough" - hmmm, not Man Flu then?

Carved stone sticking above the grass? That will make it a bugger to mow, possibly running the risk of damaging the blade(s). Ideally anything you put down should be slightly below the level of the grass. How about a line of bricks? You (he) could then run the mower right over them and still strim a neat edge? Engineering bricks are the best and the dearest. They are heavy so won't move (I don't recommend cementing them in either. Their own weight would hold them in place). Perhaps you have a salvage yard near you which sell engineering bricks? Be careful as salvaged bricks can often be dearer than buying those from a builders merchants.

Digger, Trees in containers, hmm. I do have a couple of Acers in large pots but I hate doing it as they are really a bit confined. I was given a tatty barrel a few months ago, so I sawed into halves and put in Myrtle and a Daphne. Not 'trees' I grant you but slow growing and close enough to smell the scent in the winter. I wonder why you want to grow trees in containers? I planted an Olive in the ground this year after five years in a big pot and I could almost hear the poor thing sigh.

You can plant any tree in a large pot or tub but eventually you'll have to allow it's roots into the soil. Two Roy Lancaster would recommend are Cornus florida, the American Dogwood I saw in the Eastern states of the US. Fabulous flowers but would not grow well in my chalk. The other is Malus transitoria , a Chinese Crab Apple. White flowers and butter yellow leaves in autumn.

But after a few years, you MUST get the poor things in the ground.

[digger]

Thanks paul ,the idea for trees in pots was ,in case i changed my mind about a particular tree and i don't really want a tree to grow too big that it will become a monster and a nusiance to everyone, I do appreciate that if a tree is maintained correctly i would be able to have control over it's height and spread, and my soil is heavy wet clay that i could improve with the endless supply of horse manure, a neighbour planted a willow and it has gone awry after only a couple of years and each year i cut down several shoots that appear in my garden from the willow, so i don't want that, but idetect that it is not the best idea to have trees in containers, do you think small shrubs would be the answer? I like something that has foliar interest nice bark is a bonus and nice scent would be even better, I just don't want to wake up one morning with a rain forest blocking out all the light. this idea is for the back garden and we are planning to be rid of the lawn completely within two years :-) which will give loads more planting room, i note your post about having to push past bushes to get around and i like that idea it gives you the impetus to explore further around the garden which is ideal, I don't mind not being able to see all of the garden at once from any particular view point but i don't want to be overwhelmed with dense foliage.

[Paul Narramore]

Digger

I'd have a go with Roy Lancaster's recommendations but in half barrels (tubs). That'll give you at least three years or so to make your mind up and if either don't suit you, I'll just have to take either one of them off your hands. ;-) PS My garden has 30ft trees - Ash, Willow, Sycamore - and 20ft trees - assorted conifers, Holly, Arbutus unedo, Golden and Common Yew - so it's like living in woodland.