Landscape Gardening

What we have to Work With

I always enjoy gardening, especially the planning and landscaping of a garden, but here on the coast of West Wales, gardening of any type is challenging. We have to contend with poor soil (sand to be precise), strong winds and salty air. Coming up with any sort of a ‘garden’ is difficult and most people just have a lawn with the odd shrub.

I want to make ours a little more interesting than this and have been gradually working on doing so. We’ve had a few set backs here and there thanks to having the garden completely obliterated by diggers a couple of times, but we are now getting there.

Over the past couple of years we’ve gradually been adding new beds and borders, enriching these with compost and planting wind resistant plants that will act as shelter for other plants. It has also led to the development of some structure in the garden and I now have plans to take this further.

We need a largish fairly open area in the garden for Morgan to play so I’m leaving the area nearest to the house for now as lawn. I built a Pergola halfway down the garden a couple of years ago and this is now an integral part of the garden. Beyond this I want to create a more ornamental, interesting garden with plenty of plants and some structure. Rather than just a piece of grass surrounded by shrubs and flowers I want to create a garden that leads you on and encourages to explore a little further. I want separate, distinct areas to the garden and to create a bit of a journey’ as you go through it.

Now, all of this sounds a little too grand and in truth it is. We don’t have a huge garden so only have so much to work with and with the constraints of the wind and soil it is never going to be a show garden but I do have plans that I think will make it more interesting. The first of these is a to separate the garden into three distinct sections.

Lawned Area

The top of the garden is lawn for Morgan to play on, and where we have a table and chairs, barbeque, shed etc.

Ornamental Garden

The next section will be more decorative with plenty of interesting shrubs, herbs and flowers and a couple of seating areas. At the moment it is surrounded by borders with shrubs and herbs in and I started work on the rest of it over the weekend. I’ve dug out a large bed in the middle that will eventually contain some larger shrubs, lots of bulbs and a collection of any other plants I can lay my hands on. I’d especially like to put fragrant plants and herbs here as there will be a coupe of seating areas nearby.

Border Edging

The large central border also breaks up the garden forcing you to go either left or right around it after walking through the pergola. Rather than being presented with a large space with flowers around it, you have a choice to make and somewhere to go.

One of the seating areas is going to be raised slightly and graveled, and I’ve been working on that too over the weekend. I’ve put a border of logs around it and now need to get some gravel to fill it in. It isn’t raised by much, but it will be enough to give a little change to an otherwise very flat garden.

As always, disposing of the waste from this posed a problem, but I used the turf to build little walls at the bottom of the garden, which is to become a wildlife garden and a little wooded glade (maybe).

Turf Wall

New Flower Bed

The New Seating Area

Wildlife Garden

The third area will be a little more wild with trees, slightly longer grass and other things of interest to wildlife. It will be separated from the middle part by a screen of Pampas grass, shrubs and Bamboo. It also houses the compost bins, other piles of garden waste and may even have a beehive in it soon if we get around to it. The trees we have here at the moment are mainly native Willows and Poplars, with some Lodgepole Pine and I’ve planted a Birch tree and an Oak.

Of course, we have had a nice spring so far weather-wise, so I may have been lulled into a false sense of optimism. We could get some winds anytime now that will destroy everything, including all of my plans. It is however nice to have some plans and have a vision to aim for. It won’t be easy but it should be fun trying.

Tags: GardeningWildlife