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| Go greener |
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| With a growing number of gardeners eschewing chemicals in favour of natural alternatives, we can suggest some effective products from our organic gardening selection |
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| Relax and refresh |
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| Good food freshly prepared daily, aromatic coffee, chilled wine and a grassy play area for the children. What more could you need? |
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| Food heaven |
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| Our Farm Shop is heaven for food lovers! Delicious handmade food, top quality groceries, fresh fruit and vegetables and stylish cookware and gifts. |
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| The Discovery Walk |
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| As thousands of daffodils herald the spring, stroll or stride around our Walk while the youngsters enjoy the Nature Trail |
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Time for a makeover – extreme or otherwise…
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| Thursday, 10th January 2008 |
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IN THE GARDEN WITH PETA MARSHALL
I’m a black-and-white sort of person. I do understand, however, that there are many people at the opposite end of the spectrum. These are the art-lovers who find the inner beauty in, for example, a rusting spade. All I see is a rusting spade.
And rather than make a ‘garden’, these people might prefer to call it an open space with a subtext reminiscent of abstract interpretation of a 15th century renaissance something-or-other. I don’t sit in judgement; I just know what I like and let others do their own thing.
Just like art, garden design is a very subjective thing. Personally I love the cottage garden style with roses around the door, sweet peas scrambling over an archway, and cobbled paths lined with low box hedging and miniature roses. But others hate that look, regarding it as twee and old-fashioned.
Of course, many people much prefer to see something clean, ordered and contemporary. Others still are in-between. And all that’s fine: there is room for all of us in this world.
But whatever it is that takes your fancy in terms of design, it is around now, at this time of year, that you should be thinking of any changes you may be wanting to make to your garden. Do you want a new pond or water feature? Do you want a greenhouse or summerhouse? Do you want to convert a part of the garden to a plot for vegetables? If you want any of these, or 101 other things like them, then to do it properly they will need to be integrated into the garden properly, otherwise it will look haphazard.
If you are lucky enough to move to a garden that is bare – perhaps left fresh after the builders have gone, or the garden is just laid down to grass – then you will have a wealth of design options available to you.
Whether you have a bare plot, or you’re just considering making a few changes to an already established area, the first job should be to record the garden on paper. If you are planning beds, borders, lawn, patio/deck, and possibly things like a pond or shed then it is best if you produce a scale drawing or plan of the area. This must include all of the garden’s ‘fixtures and fittings’, ie. the house, greenhouse/conservatory, immovable and desirable trees and shrubs, the driveway, paving and walling, drains, electricity poles, sewers and sumps.
You will need to conduct your own ‘survey’ of the garden. Walk around the house (and any fixed outbuildings) and make a large sketch of the layout, in plan form but not necessarily to scale. A long, flexible measuring tape is useful. The back door, or some other fixed part of the property, is a good starting point.
The ideal places for the most important elements of your future garden (patio, lawn, greenhouse, vegetable garden, and so on as appropriate) should be marked on the plan. The remaining spaces will be left for you to put in your favourite plants.
The first plants to consider (or dismiss) are trees. These are the ‘backbone’ of any garden, and are a real, long-term investment. They can be, and should be, viewed from all sides. They can be used to hide an eyesore such as a telegraph pole or electricity pylon. And they make a focal point.
Trees can be grown for a number of other gardening reasons, too. They can create and cast shade, they can be grown for their leaves, flowers, fruits and bark; some people even grow them for their winter outlines. Lovers of wildlife will attract plenty of birds if there are trees about – for perching, roosting and for food (a tree has unseen and untold thousands of insects all over it).
Then there are shrubs. It is perfectly possible to have shrubs in flower throughout the year; even in the depths of winter, when blooms are particularly welcome to brighten up the garden. There are shrubs with fragrant flowers, shrubs with golden evergreen leaves, shrubs with fiery autumn colours, shrubs with berries and shrubs with attractive bark.
In design terms, fragrant shrubs should always be sited where they can be sniffed at close range; thorny shrubs should always be planted so that their branches do not rip clothing if you walk past them; and in shrub borders the tallest ones go at the back whilst the smaller ones go at the front (in an ‘island’ bed set within a lawn, the tallest shrubs should be in the centre, with progressively smaller ones towards the edges).
A hundred years ago we had ‘herbaceous borders’, which contained mainly herbaceous plants. This is actually a misnomer as all non-woody, flowering plants, technically, are herbaceous. Today we don’t use the term ‘herbaceous plant’ in the way that the Victorians referred to them; instead we call them more correctly perennials, annuals, biennials or bulbous plants. And these all go into what we today refer to as mixed borders.
Mixed borders can also be the home to some shrubs, roses, a hedge backdrop and even a small tree if there is room.
Then there are things like raised beds. These can be edged of ornamental stone, concrete blocks, bricks, or even old railways sleepers.
Patios, archways, pergolas…a place for the barbecue…there are so many facets and features to gardens today we really should think more about design. And there is no better time than the present! Happy gardening!
This week in your garden
Rake out and burn weedy, pest-harbouring debris from hedge bottoms.
Grub out tree stumps liable to harbour honey fungus, whose bootlace-like rhizomorphs may spread to infect and quickly kill nearby trees and shrubs.
Choose a mild day to empty the greenhouse and scrub it (and the glass) with a garden disinfectant. Finish by lighting a sulphur candle to deal with any lurking pests and diseases.
Peta Marshall is the plant centre manager at Priory Farm in Nutfield. Website: www.prioryfarm.co.uk
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