From setup to ongoing

Debate has begun about the season.  Is it autumn yet or late summer?  We're in one of those phases where nobody, least of all the weather, can make up their mind.  Transition.  I and my garden are in the same sort of place, almost at the end of the setup stage of The Big Garden Project 2016 and moving into ongoing gardening.

To remind you:  this has been the year when I committed to working part-time (whatever that turned out to be) and therefore having time once again for my front garden, beginning with some landscaping.  Here's my post about it at the beginning, in April, and here's a follow-up in May.  I haven't written about it again here and it's time I did.  But first, a repeat of the "before" photo.

Today I'm really enjoying seeing that photo because things are looking so different now.  The landscaper said he was looking forward to seeing the beds in six months' time and I said it would be at least a year before it looked like much, but contrary to my expectations, the many perennials that I've grown from seed this year have mostly flourished and flowered already.  Things are already bushing out much more than I expected and I've had a lupin flower.

This last is no mean feat because of slugs and snails but, this year at least, I've had great success with some organic slug pellets that are harmless to wildlife and pets.  Even the vegetables have survived the molluscs, though pigeons and caterpillars are trying to make up for it.

I've bought about six plants from garden centres over the last few months and about the same number from market stalls and there have been a few plants donated from friends or Freegle members.  And now, suddenly, here's a colourful and tidy garden again.

It's not perfect.  The lawn has had a bit of a chequered history and still isn't the lawn I think I should have.  The landscaping/maintenance team are working on getting it right and most of it is now improving but there's a way to go.  There's still lots of convulvulus (known in our family as 'white convulsions' since it was described that way by someone known to the family, around 1960) and I'm waging a constant battle with handfork and weedkiller, the only way to kill it off where it has its roots entwined with things I want to keep. 

Against that, though, there are so many things flourishing.  Grown from seed and flowering in their first year have been mallow, commelina, gailardia, antirrhinum, gazania, pinks, sweet william, lupins, chrysanthemum, michaelmas daisy and penstemmon. 

If you're a glutton for punishment, many more photos showing the landscaping, gradual planting and general progress of the garden can be seen here.  I'm not sure there'll be many more added now as I don't think there's much more to flower that hasn't already done.  One last setup job will be to plant spring bulbs during the next couple of weeks and then the setup stage of the project will be finished.

I would like to declare The Big Garden Project 2016 a success. I love being able to wander into the garden and admire the bees at work in all the variety of colours.  The traffic noise will always be there but once again the garden is a place I can entertain friends and family.  For me, 2016 seems to have been a good enough summer.

A different place

Painting the modern garden was one of those 'live screenings' of an exhibition, which was also so much more.  As well as glorious impressionist paintings of swathes of garden colours, we saw film and photographs of gardens of the time and now, all accompanied by a commentary which included letters and other writings by the artists.  About to embark on my big garden project, I felt enveloped in essence of garden.  I didn't want a plan and didn't get one.  Instead, the images and ideas gave words to the feelings I had about my own garden and what I wanted from it.

One of the most interesting things I learned was that whereas French garden designers might have gone for a more natural look, concentrating on colour schemes and sweeping vistas, German designers often considered areas of a garden almost as different 'rooms';  I realised that recently I had begun to see my own garden, in particular the patio, that way.  

At one end I have the seat and 'coffee table' I've written about here before.  It's great for morning coffee, lunch and afternoon tea.  I moved the old battered seat out of the way but found last summer that I really enjoyed its being nestled under the escallonia, suggesting a little shaded seating area.  The problem was that the old battered seat was no longer safe to sit on.  I've looked for a new seat but nothing appealed as much as the old one, so I've now had it repaired and it's nestling beautifully.

The other end of the patio can accommodate a dining table and chairs, or perhaps in the future a hot tub.  It also has the water feature and on warm evenings last year I enjoyed sitting there on the rocker with a book and a G & T.

 

Then there's the vegetable garden.  Just before the landscapers started work on the front garden I finally got round to having a fence built along the top of the platform and the edge of the vegetable plot.  It was the final stage of getting the yard levelled and surfaced a few years ago that we'd left because it wasn't an essential part of the work.  I always wanted a fence there, though, having removed the big gates and some of the wall which divided the property off.  I like a boundary.  

What I hadn't anticipated was that the vegetable garden now has a very different feel to it - another contained space, which it had never felt before.  And the platform that runs in front of the pottery and the greenhouse is now a safe-feeling area where plants might be hardened off, pots can be dried and generally one can feel one is 'in' the back garden rather than just slightly removed from the road.

All of which brings me back to my title.  My garden, my plot, is now transformed into a different place.  It's once more a place I want to be in as often as I can (weather permitting) and I'm really excited about how it might develop from here. 

And so, of course, I am myself in a different place too. Planted, rooted and growing here and looking forward almost most of all to inviting other people in to share.

The Big Garden Project 2016

Once I had a lovely garden.  Here it is in 2000, the only time I seem to have photographed it.

It wasn't weed free, as you can see, and the lawn wasn't perfect, but the flowerbeds were full of colour and the lawn was flat and green and much the same height as the flowerbeds. 

Gradually the balance of my work became less and less teaching and more and more artwork.  Artwork isn't paid nearly as well as teaching and by the time I stopped teaching altogether, about 6 or 7 years ago, I no longer had time for the front garden at all because I needed to work very long hours to make enough income.  (I have always managed to keep up with the vegetable garden at the back of the house.)  Mike used to mow the lawn and for a couple of years we did give it some attention, but it was a losing battle and the quality has deteriorated, while the level has risen above that of the flowerbeds.  I'm told this is because of lack of traffic on the lawn coupled with busy worms. I've had a friend do a little weeding some years, but not enough to keep on top of things.  Gradually the beds have become infested with grass. 

Now at last I am working part time and always planned that when this day came I would return to tending my front garden.  Too late!  It's actually now beyond me and my back.  I fall into the flowerbeds from the raised lawn and because I still have some plants I like, it's almost impossible to remove the grass from around them.  Mike was also in charge of tree pruning but that too had got beyond me as I'm not able to lop through branches as thick as the ones he tackled and the small trees had become bigger and straggly and past what I could deal with.  I'm almost ashamed to post photos of what it all looks like now.

And as for the quality of the lawn ...

So 2016 is the year of the Big Garden Project.  In May a landscaping outfit are coming to rescue the front garden and after that I'll be able to work on it myself.  

Today I feel the project has actually begun.  An ex-tree surgeon friend spent a couple of hours removing dead branches and giving a long-overdue cut back to the tamarisk and the smoke bush, so here is the first 'after' photograph of the Big Garden Project 2016.  

Hurray!