The Thompson Family: Serious Gardenning

I decided that the garden was in need a radical overhaul. The problem was that just before we left for Germany, the garden was really getting on my nerves. There was a rockery that led to the steps. They were so big that the previous owners of the house had placed concrete paving slabs on them to reduce the amount of ground. This left and narrow path, then edging stones, then paving slabs and no where large enough to place chairs and a tab at the back, with steps up the middle and these two huge flower beds on either side of a pathle to sit out on. Or large enough for a child to play on.

So we changed the shape of the flower beds. It wasn't too difficult - just hard work. We reduced the size of the beds by drawing a semi circle from where we wanted the centre to be and shifting the edging stones to there. Then moved the paving slabs to fill a more useful location and the shrubs had to temporarily relocated so that they weren't in the middle of our new sitting/playing space.

Problem - the shrubs were all randomly relocated. There were bare patches where the slabs were moved from, crowded patches where the beds were made smaller and none of the shrubs were trimmed or pruned while we were away! As there were three hydrangeas, the garden was somewhat overgrown in places!

Solution - I spent a day with a lovely lady called Rebecca who came and sorted out the mess. You know how you meet someone and you are immediately on the same wave length? That is what happened. My garden was mainly green fir trees, these huge hydrangeas, some yellow things and a few other smaller plants. The effect was not pleasing and there was no colour until about late July/early August. So Rebecca and I planned. We had a tight budget so she said that I could work with her digging and replanting, and she would provide the knowledge. PERFECT!

It was not the right time of year to prune hydrangeas - we just dug one out altogether instead!
We also dug out some of the large fir trees, and other plants that were just too large, or that were not to my taste, moved other plants and had the whole garden cleared by lunchtime. We then went to a garden nursery, chose plants for eventual size, colour, leaf shape, when they flower, and so on, came back and had the whole garden finished and tidy by 7.00 (except for one pile that needs shredding for compost.) Pictures below: