You can always buy in an expert – but when it comes to your garden, the joys of DIY are very real: you reap what you sow! A garden is a work that you never want to consider finished – every year is new and different.
Whatever size your garden, even if it is only a patio, you can enjoy thinking about what you want to grow and how you’d like it to look. Just outside your doors and windows, here is your daily landscape so indulge in a bit of garden design to make the best of it.
There are a couple of basic tips for gardens that I find helpful in getting ideas flowing.
Scale and perspective: if you have a small space, it’s unwise to plant trees that will grow to 20m. If you have a patio it’s sound advice to keep things trimmed and under control, and to use containers. These have the great advantage that they let you make the most of a space by shifting them about to suit the occasion.
Boundary walls and fences: plant to camouflage them, and climbers are a good way of achieving this without taking up a lot of your ground space or casting too much shadow. With imagination your garden might go on forever beyond the vegetation that surrounds it, and climbers can be guided and trimmed. There is huge choice and you can enjoy looking. These plants will give you a green fringe, provide colour, scent and even crops, attract visiting wildlife, shut out the rest of the world, and give year-round foliage and interest.
Vertical interest: especially in a typical narrow suburban garden, why not introduce an archway to break up the ‘view’ and add perspective? Over this arch – if it is a sunny garden – you could train a vine and enjoy a crop of grapes. If not, check out what will suit the conditions you have, and look for colour, shape, scent and length and season of flowering. The right plant in the right place is the happy gardening choice, and you can have several growing together to add variety. There are always new strains under development and they arrive every season. Do a bit of research – including spying on friends’ and neighbours gardens – and look out for things you like and think would work for you.
Planning is very much part of the fun of planting; with a frame and basic shape to your garden picture, you will be ready to fill in detail.
