– Gardens can be anything you want them to be, so long as they work for you, do the things you require them to do and give you the rewards you seek.

This week I spent a little time with Vicki in her Garden in Broadmeadows.

It’s akin to many gardens owned by busy career professionals in that it has been designed and maintained to be easy and straightforward to manage. What is interesting is that it is an established garden, with established planting around a beautiful Evergreen thematic.

From one side of the garden to the other a double line of fencing covered with Ivy creates an immediate wall of privacy and offers a unique habitat for small creatures, birds and comprehensive biodiversity of insects too.

The concept of this garden is for it to be completely functional (practical) and for it to be an easy to manage space for a busy, working professional couple. The greenery (Evergreens) is the colour theme offset with a range of different colours from climbing shrubs like Clematis and standing pots.

After working hard all week long, sometimes all you want to do is to sit outside in the sunshine, on a comfortable deck-chair, perhaps enjoy a meal Al fresco and a glass of wine and have somewhere neat and tidy where you can simply unwind from the stress of the day and watch the sun go down.

A well thought out and easy to manage garden then doesn’t give you the feeling that you have “work to do” when you get home!

If it serves it’s purpose – i.e. simplicity then that is the reward and benefit for the owners to enjoy.

On both sides of the garden, a mixture of evergreen planting creates the all-year-round colour and privacy – a mixture of Laurels, Bay, Ivy and Clematis and is climaxed by an almighty tall Eucalyptus Tree – a majestic focal point for the eye when you look up to the sky from  a deck chair in the well appointed paved patio area.

This delightful Green Garden showcases a palette of many different hues and even within single varieties you can get different colours coming through at different times of the season.

Laurel is a fast growing plant which can put on a lot of leafage throughout the year – it’s new growth is a lovely distinct Lime Green and is very popular as a hedging component as it can be cut back hard and it will still fill out rapidly.

Common Ivy makes a great companion (there are about 10 to 15 different Ivy species available) and you can add a range of colour changes by choosing different coloured variegated varieties that offer greens, whites and yellows with different leaf shapes and patterns.

Evergreens tend to repel rain quite well and any space under things like laurels and ivy tends to be quite dry and undisturbed. This makes for excellent habitat for birds to nest, for hedgehogs, mice and also for a broad range of insects to evolve safely away from the advance of any flooding.

This garden has an never-ending supply of winged visitors – Birds can be quite tame and will frequently visit the garden throughout the day for a forage. With so many insects species available on the menu, the birds make the most of this environmental smorgasbord and the garden owner just needs to sit back, relax and enjoy the entertainment they offer.

After a tough day at work, a soothing green and pleasant garden with a constant display of delights provided by visiting birds is a great reward and a real pleasure to enjoy – just kick-back and soak it all in!

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You don’t have to have a big garden to have something of envy, small gardens can be just perfect and give you the outdoor living space you want for you and your family to enjoy. What’s important is that it works in a way for what you want to do and how you want to use it.

Earlier this week I spent some time with Kathryn chatting about her Swanwick garden and the things she enjoys and loves about gardening. She’s a keen and avid gardener and takes great pride in her garden and it looks stunning as you can see.

The center piece of the back garden is a delightful 20 year old Acer (see photo right) which is beautifully shaped but also changes colour as the season progresses – giving the garden a different central colour theme towards summer.

Acers are great for creating a focal point and one that changes colour and has a interesting shape is definitely something to be proud of.

A Healthy Lawn

The lawn after it had been scarified and mowed – Perfectly shows off the beautiful Acer and it’s sumptuous cast shadow on the lawn!

Her garden is quite narrow at the back and long and has hedges on either side which obviously creates a certain amount of shade throughout the day.

The lawn has a continual “moss” issue which a lot of gardens have even though the lawn is on a slight gradient and drains well.

Areas nearer to hedges tend not to get the same light and they can be early indicators of poor lawn health – if they get dry, mossy and patchy.

One of the key aspects of ensuring a healthy lawn is as you remove material – moss, weeds etc. and applying chemical treatments that it gets replaced with new grass seed or, in extreme areas, re-turfing. Any type of treatment be it, chemical or physical (like scarifying) is attempting to remove something. If your lawn needs a helping hand, have a quick read through my article on scarifying for some hints and tips.

Lawns can get very dry and patchy with successive treatments – as shown below in this small patch (photo left).

A well drained lawn with moss and successive treatments needs something putting back in. If the lawn gets very dry, you can encourage growth with regular watering to protect the optimal growing conditions and offer an occasional feed too.

A patch like this can be spike aerated and using a combination of a nutrient rich soil dressing and new grass seed will help bring it back to life. Give new seeded areas upto 5 weeks growth to establish.

Keep the grass a reasonable length too. There’s a misconception that moss can be tackled with very short grass – it’s not a good strategy for treatment long term – keeping the lawn healthy and the soil it grows on is. A reasonable length gives the lawn it’s colour, the lushness and protects the soil from direct sunlight and drying out.

If your lawn is patchy – it’s time to add something back in to rejuvenate it.

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Today, I was very fortunate to meet a very nice chap, who is a retired engineer and also an avid gardener. He is kind, interesting, talkative, friendly and obviously enjoying his adventures as a gardener.

He’s lived in Swanwick for nearly 50 years now and went to school in South Normanton as a lad. He spent many years at Rolls Royce and now enjoys some of his free time crafting a beautiful little haven at the back of his property – affectionately named as “Dad’s Garden”.

It’s nice to chat with someone on the same wavelength and when he said to me “Birds know if you are going to harm them” it made me smile – because I knew exactly what he meant in an instance.

Just a few moments before saying it, two small birds had appeared from the bushes at the back of the garden to land just a feet or two from where we were standing.

He recounted that one day, he was sat out the back on his little swing seat and one landed right on his head! Takes me back to when I first read “The Secret Garden” when I was 7 or 8 years old. I’m sure what he says is true. Animals do have an intelligence about who to trust and I like to test this out especially with birds, by not doing anything that might scare them and see how close they are prepared to get. I think most Gardeners have an affinity with birds – usually you befriend a little Robin or a Blackbird that has slowly got to trust you over time.

As you can see from the above picture, his garden haven is quite small – it’s divided into two sections – the planting being dominant in the foreground and split by the green wooden screen with encapsulated trellis, behind which, is a seating area, the greenhouse and a small border area too.

The greenhouse laden with Geraniums

It’s a lovely space to sit in and you could chew the cud and put the world to rights for hours I’m sure.

In his words, there’s a lot more to see that’s still in the ground and I would love to go back and see more in the summer.

He opened up the picture gallery on his smartphone and showed me a stunning display of Dahlias.

It’s still early Spring, so there’s plenty of time for the spaces to fill out – but here’s a selection of some of the Springtime plants in bloom.

I guess there’s two things to take away from my visit today – It doesn’t matter how old you are you can still “potter about” in the garden – you might not be able to do everything yourself – but don’t give up on the things you can do because they account for a lot of the pleasure and contentment in your life.

And the second – We have all have so much more in common than we think or dare to believe.

A lovely chap, a great conversation and I hope to go back again at some point (maybe with some biscuits next time).

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Right on the corner of Priory Gardens, Swanwick in Derbyshire you’ll notice a distinctive house due to the design and planting of it’s front garden.

I noticed it immediately walking up the incline of Beaulieu Way on Sunday morning and the first thing that took my eye was the magnificent Acer Tree which the whole design centers around. From the photo below, it doesn’t seem like that until you get up close and the colour, shape and texture of the leaves begins to dominate every view, whichever way you look.

With the very kind permission and courtesy of the owners I was given access to photograph, both the front and the rear garden of the property. The rear garden is perfectly secluded, dappled sunlight and beautifully planted and designed to maximise the potential of outdoor living.

With respect to the front garden – what’s key to the non-gardener here and for those who claim to be “too busy” to have a beautiful garden, is that the front garden is remarkable straight forward to maintain as there is no grass to mow, and a lot of the colour and shape comes from perennials with seasonal planting adding the flourishing touches. The design clearly sets out to provide a casket for planting but in a way that looks to be easy to manage.

I won’t spend hours discussing all the in’s and outs – but here is a range of plants, shrubs, trees and flowers that you could grow and feature in your Swanwick Garden!

Take some inspiration from this beautiful garden and try them for yourself.

I’ll be adding images to an Album on my Facebook Page – So if you wish to interact and ask questions or comment – please do!

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