Small Garden Design: What does your Front Entrance say about you? Apologies to the owner here, it is difficult to cut back a large shrub well, but in this case it is essential otherwise the car gets scratched every time you enter or exit! However this does now look a little sad and rather savaged – so how to
Read more
I bet you never thought you could get a plant which is stripy, well you can and this one is lovely. Libertia Peregrinans is an orange and green stripy grass like plant – but not ‘just about’ orange coloured leaves, it has really really orange leaves; excellent with purple plants, blue plants and black plants. It’s not too tall and would look rubbish
Read moreSmall Garden Design: Don’t forget your Fences! We all have them, surrounding our gardens. Sadly though, many regard fencing as ‘something that’s just there’ in the garden, but fences can really be used a wonderful backdrop to highlight the plants you have. You wouldn’t forget to repaint the sitting room walls in your home, well the same applies outside, when you
Read more
Scented Plants : Sarcococca Confusa I don’t know why the trend in gardening over the years has been for really showy flowers with frilly bits and a multitude of colours but not much else – when one of the greatest pleasures anyone can have is walking up a drive and getting your nose assaulted by the most wonderful smells!
Read more
Small Garden Design : Pruning Quite obviously the privet above and this conifer got too large, but decapitation doesn’t work, it will still look like this next year and the next….many shrubs and conifers especially don’t regrow from old wood unfortunately.
Read more
Small Garden Design: Hedges OK, bet there is a driveway near you that looks like this. One of the reasons to avoid conifer hedging is that once pruned, the plant will not regenerate, so you end up with a dead mess to look at.
Read moreGarden Bloopers – we’ve all had some There are many design mistakes people make with gardens, and most of them can be sorted out fairly easily (albeit with a little physical effort), but that won’t cost the earth, just a little of your time. As someone told me once, life is too short to skimp on cheap wine… don’t put up
Read moreSmall Garden Design: There’s lot’s of advice but not much help! Not the best plant combination! Whenever I used to go round garden centres or places, many people, including at time me, tendend to exhibit similar buying patterns – We all wander round, with a loose thought that ‘they would like to get something for the garden’.
Read more
Alliums Plants that are totally independent are really special, by that I mean, you plant, up they come, they fade away and repeat the same cycle year after year. Alliums are absolutely fantastic plants, and I think they work really well with Tulips. As the tulips fade these are coming into flower, yet they take up no real space in
Read moreSmall Garden Design: Move a plant and transform a space Looking up the drive of this house, your initial reaction is to look between the two shrubs as that is where the gap is rather than at the front door and the camellia (the one on the right) seems to be in the way.
Read more