In The Beginning.

The Garden@19

Copied from my original blog OurGarden@19

We purchased the house in November 2004 and moved in during August 2005.

During that time along with decorating the house, plants were lifted at our previous garden and potted up ready for the move. 

The Garden@19 consisted of mainly lawn with a few shrubs, trees and a large shed in a lovely shade of Terracotta. The only plants remaining from when we took over are a
Cherry Tree, a Magnolia soulangeana, a Mahonia  and two Rhododendrons.
One of the main reasons we bought the house was the size of the garden,  not too big to demand too much time (sometimes) not too small to hold all the plants I would like to grow( all the time).
The rear Garden@19 is 126ft x 40ft slightly wider than the house at the start and then tapers to almost a point at the far end.  This is the propagating area where I have a potting shed and two greenhouses where plants are propagated for the garden and sale at our open days.
The soil is a free draining gravelly loam which is great to work with but can dry out very quickly in the summer due to the neighbours large Copper Beech and Common Beech. They do provided a wonderful borrowed landscape to the garden especially in the winter.

The front is South facing and devoted to car parking, an iris bed, alpine boxes and colourful pot displays.

The rear garden is North facing and divided into rooms (Hidecote) essentially so that it cannot all be seen at once.  This allows the planting of different garden styles. There is an Oriental garden, a white and green garden, (a white garden is so last century!),  a mixed border and a never ending woodland walk! (this is the Head Gardener’s imagination getting the better of him but if it keeps him happy).
Raised beds edge the patio, one contains a herb bed and two others are now planted with irises from my growing collection and some annuals, trained fruit trees create a dividing line between this area and the rest of the garden.

This photo was taken from the same position one year later.

I marked the layout of the different rooms and borders with canes and coloured spray marker  in November and then killed the grass in the border areas during the winter.

You can just  see in this photo in the spring the grass is a lighter colour in the area marked out as the border. I then planted straight into the turf adding a handful of Compost, Blood Fish and Bone into each planting hole. The garden  has never been dug. I first read of this planting technique in an article by Bunny Guinness, I thought if it is good enough for a RHS Gold Medal winning garden designer along with not having to dig the garden it was worth trying. 

We did not lose one plant within that first year.

There is still an area at the front to plant in the autumn.

Looking towards the house.

The White and Green garden was also planted at this time, the Oriental garden was put on hold while the power company decided what they were going to do with their pole in the corner of that area.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing The Garden@19 from the beginning.