Designing a new front garden

When I first moved to my current house, the neither the front garden nor the back garden were anything nice to look at or inspiring at all. I've worked on the back and there's been many changes and although it's not looking it's best, I'm hoping that I've got it right this summer. The front is just awful to be honest with you. There's a concrete drive (why oh why did the previous owner do that, I can't afford to put a new one in), an old low, wooden fence that hasn't really survived the last few days of storms but there are some lovely plants: escallonia (that I put in), roses, a weigela, crocosmia and some more roses growing against the house.

Now, I'm not one for removing plants that have nothing wrong with them so I'm keeping all the plants where they are and I'll be working around them. I'm no garden designer and despite going to a local horticultural meeting recently about designing a small garden I'm non the wiser really. I've taken some inspiration from the internet, creating a mood board with various ideas and here's what Im looking to do:

Remove the old wooden fencing
Clear up the old patch of grass
Add two ornaments and fill with flowers
Add hedging where I can

The main inspiration I got was from striking pictures from the Dubai Miracle Garden's floral clock. It was the peacock with flowers as its tail that made me want something similar but on a much smaller scale of course!

So, I sourced a peacock planter from Dunelm, priced at £18, which I thought was quite reasonable as some ornamental peacocks were priced much higher. In this case I'm not looking for something high quality, just a good start.

I'm looking to keep flowers to a similar colour to the peacock so I've chosen to plant the following in the planter:

Petunia Fanfare Dark Blue
Lobelia Waterfall Blue
Fuchsia Southern Belle Voodoo
Verbena Enchantment Purple

Hopefully you can see the colour of the flowers on the varieties I've picked here. 

My daughter asked if she could help so I got her to fill a clean pot with potting compost and then add the plants in, placing the lobelia on one side, which will be near the neck of the peacock, the fuchsia on the sides to trail over the wings, with the petunia and verbena at the back to trail over the tail. 

I was pleased to see that the plugs didn't have too much plastic by means of a small pot. Although there was still a lot of plastic in use buying this. 

Carefully packing the young plants in the pot.

I've kept the planter in the poly tunnel as it's still too cold for the plants to be outside. Some of them are not hardy so I don't want to lose any.  Just to be doubly sure that I won't see them succumb to frost I've placed protection over the planter until the danger of frost is over. 

Next I'll be working on the front to clear any rubbish and give the roses a clip. After that I'll plan to dig and level the patch of land. I want to add some more dramatic planting as the flower varieties I'm using for the tail will be low plants. I'm hoping that the peacock will stand in a place that looks like a small jungle! 

Until next time x

Gardening for your health

   I'm guessing that I got my love of gardening from my mother. She would grow fruit and veg, harvesting everything possible and then storing the excess over winter with foods such as pickles and passata. One of our neighbours would pop round for some fresh mint, dropping off home grown cooking apples in return. Another would donate some home made elderflower wine for home grown offerings. As a child I would run around the framework of runner beans, observing ladybirds eating the blackfly, while at school my mother would drop off excess seedlings to other mums and school teachers who would be interested as she came to pick me up in the afternoons.

   However, now, that lovely garden that was once so rich with plants is overrun with weeds and overgrown trees. It's as though no one has looked after it in years. Wait...maybe because no one really has. Since my father died my mother has suffered bouts of depression and where she had grown so much of her own food there now stands weeds. Looking back at it all, society has somewhat changed. Most of those lovely neighbours (I knew the whole street when I was a child) have passed away or moved and new neighbours have been reluctant to integrate with everyone or have unfortunately been absolutely horrible. It's all very sad but my mother doesn't want to move and as I visit her once a week I thought it would be a lovely idea to work on her garden again so that she would enjoy it once more and reduce her shopping bills by growing her own.

   It's not going to be an easy project as the garden has become so very overgrown but I see this as a positive challenge! Over time I want to introduce easy to maintain plants and shrubs in the first half of the back garden, with fruit and veg in the second half. There is a shed in need of restoration and a greenhouse that is alive with the biggest spiders I've seen for a while!

   This will take a long time but I made a start late last year and I think that it would be a nice thing to share, to show people how gardening can be good for your well being and that it can be rewarding to work at something like this. For now I leave you with some images of how the garden looks at the moment:

 A very unloved lawn but one that can be fixed easily.

 Rubbish and overgrowth cover the entrance to the front garden.

 A leftover broken gnome sits sadly close to where there was once a big, beautiful hardy fuchsia. 

 There is a path buried under here which leads to the greenhouse, behind which grew raspberries.

 A close up of the greenhouse.

The shed that my father built and in front was the veg patch (imagine runner beans, carrots, onions, tomatoes and herbs)