Garden make-over

Our front garden in late August

When, in the middle of August, we moved into Trinity Close, the garden appeared reasonably tidy. But appearances can be deceptive; a rather large cypress was destined to become far too big - or would have done had we allowed it. A disproportionately large clump of pampas grass dominated the lawn. As for the lawn itself, grass was fighting a losing battle with weeds. It wouldn't do.




Out came the pampas grass and the cypress bit the dust (well, clay actually) and the lawn was painstakingly removed, spadeful by spadeful. It left us with a tabula rasa - a blank canvas on which we could work, putting our own stamp on the front garden.

The next step was the sinking of stones - local sandstone scavenged from various sources - in order to try and create the impression of a rocky outcrop in the form of a double ridge. I must admit that it doesn't look very convincing at the moment.

The same garden in mid-January.

Then came the delivery of 1.5 tonnes of gravel which was spread over the vacant ground to a depth of about 3 cms; I'm afraid that the front garden wasn't going to be wildlife friendly. A visit to a garden centre produced three hefty lumps of stone to be randomly placed about. A handful of dwarf conifers, carefully selected to remain small after ten or so years, were planted in an equally random manner.




At the moment there is little in the way of colour. Lavender will bloom and I hope to include some smallish shrubs such as Euryops acraeus and, perhaps, some cushion-forming relatives of broom and rosemary, from the pea family and the mint family. In March/April a good selection of alpines should become available from specialist nurseries. These will go into crevices in the stone 'outcrops' and give splashes of yellows, reds and blues. Hopefully.

Watch this space.