My Garden

First of all a vague map or plan sort of thing to give you an idea of the layout.

The plot is roughly aligned from north-west at the top to south east at the bottom, the back wall of the house faces almost due south, the front of the house spends most of the day in shade.

The light grey patch at the top is the drive, with a bay for a second car, leading to the dark grey rectangle which is the extended garage. The drive used to be shaded out by a big sycamore tree in the neighbours garden which I helped him remove last year.

The various light green bits are lawn, although for the little patch at the side of the house that's a loose description as it has also been well shaded and is mostly moss. There was a third patch at the front of the house but I've replaced that with a fernery as it had turned into all moss.

The various green circles are the bigger shrubs and trees, the huge green circle at the bottom is the horse chestnut tree in the neighbours garden. The local squirrels kindly bury the chestnuts everywhere, including in my pots, so I've got plenty of those, as well as a number of walnut trees from walnuts they've brought in from one of the other nearby gardens.

Lets have some pictures now.

The fernery. A bit sparse at the moment, the ferns up against the house are well established. The ones further out are new and suffering a bit from the heat.


The lawn at the side of the house. Needs work. I've been giving the lilacs a hard prune which is letting a lot more light in. I'm tempted to rip up the grass and move my potted ferns and acers round there, but I suspect doing that right next to the road may not be a good idea. It doesn't help that there's a cat has decided that scraping a strand or two of moss counts as burying its business.


The drive, needs work but this is cunningly hidden by the artistic nature of the picture. There's some sunflowers and lillies gone in the bed on the far side while I work out what to do.


The side of the house from across the road. From over there you can't see the grass, or the fact the fence needs replacing. The gates across the drive are the browner bits on the right.


Wandering round to the back of the house we've got patio corner. An assortment of pots get swapped in and out depending on the time of year. The fence is covered in a Clematis Montana which is impressive in the spring.


On the back wall of the house I've got a grape vine to the left wrapped round the kitchen window which gives me something like 20kg of grapes a year. To the right of the back door is a wisteria which is just getting established.


Looking south from the house there's various pots along the otherwise boring garage wall. Fuschias currently with a tub of petunias in the foreground.


And moving round a bit you can see down as far as the greenhouse, the red rectangle on the plan. There's a small pond on the left, you can just see the irises in it. The assorted amphibians help the hedgehogs and thrushes keep the molluscs in their place.


At the bottom of the garden is the vegetable plot. Suffering a bit from the heat, but the rain has helped.


And finally. I block paved the area batween the greenhouse and the compost bins which are up against the back fence. This tends to fill up with plants that are waiting to go elsewhere. Currently several acers and tree ferns share the area with a couple of apple trees and some more fuschias.


Last modified: Sun Jun 26 20:52:45 GMT Daylight Time 2005