Spring Clean! Redecorate! Refurbish!

As soon as the festive season is over, you see all those annoying adverts for new Kitchens, Bathrooms, Fitted Bedrooms and Carpets. Well now is the time to think about changes in the garden. Midwinter is the ideal time to overview the garden for the following reasons:

• If you are considering redesigning your garden or borders the work can be planned and executed before the winter ends, allowing time for replanting in the spring. This allows plants to establish before the heat of summer.
• Existing plants are dormant, so as long as the ground isn’t frozen, they can be moved or split up, with excellent survival rates.

Consider the Garden as an outdoor room!

Does it meet all your needs?

What do you want your Garden to be?

A Dining Room? A Playroom? A Gym? A Sunny Solarium or a Shady Reading Room?

Now is the time to think about:

• Laying that new Patio for your outdoor Dining room
• Installing Decking to make your own personal Suntrap
• Building a bespoke Pergola so you have a quiet ‘Den’ at the top of the Garden.

Plants can be your Walls!

Sometimes it is possible to redesign a garden, by simply changing the shape of the borders and creating different ‘Rooms’, using plants as screens. Focal points, either objects or contrasting plants, lead the eye from one room to another.

As a garden designer, I personally enjoy, completely changing a garden with as little major construction as possible. Not only does it bring Garden Design to homes of all budgets, but it is less disruptive. Existing plants, wildlife and the miniature ecosystem within the garden can be left undisturbed and the whole effect is much more natural.

As an example, a recent project involved the removal of the dreaded Leylandii trees, which surrounded a garden. Some of the resulting timber was used to create a ‘Stumpery’, planted with Ferns and plants with attractive leaf colour.

This picture was taken about 5 months after planting. By next year the plants will have filled in more, the logs will have rotted slightly and the whole design will appear totally natural.

Border Redesign

Keeping to the house analogy, sometimes you like the basic contents in a room, but it needs a ‘lick of paint’ and new curtains to give it a ‘new look’

If totally redesigning your garden is out of your budget, consider giving your garden a makeover with new plants.

• If your garden is brown and dead now, plant some evergreens in a variety of foliage colours. Use some deciduous shrubs that have winter flowers, such as Viburnum or bright berries like Skimmia reevesianna. Alternatively use plants such as dogwoods, which have winter stem interest.
• Go for a low maintenance border. Replace herbaceous perennials and annuals, with a mix of interesting deciduous and evergreen shrubs or shrub roses under planted with blue salvias.
• For a riot of colour all season, plant a traditional herbaceous border. A true kaleidoscope of colour or a themed border of hot reds, cool blues and violets or tranquil whites. Always effective!
• Modern contemporary schemes using a very limited variety, of highly contrasting plants, can make an instant dramatic change, especially in small gardens.

Change the Soft Furnishings!

Sometimes the overall effect in a garden can be altered by new furniture, planters or ornaments. This doesn’t have to cost the earth. These are just a few cheap and cheerful ideas.

• Repaint old wooden furniture in bright colours. If you have young kids, why not paint your picnic bench in the colours of the rainbow. Tester pots could be a cheap way of getting a variety of colours. NB The mix to order Dulux paints are a good bet as you get a decent sized small tin – pick a quiet evening to ask for all the colours or the DIY shops might refuse!!

A more subtle idea might be to paint the furniture to match your planting scheme or to coordinate with an interior room.

• Look for interesting Planters in car boot sales and charity shops. Have an unusual theme. Eg Old Cooking Pots, Saucepans, kettles or a recycle theme such as computers, printers and harddrives – the casing can make a very unusual modern planter.
• One of the prettiest ideas I ever saw was an old Aga cooker, with fuchsias, Ivy Geraniums and Lobelia, spilling out of all its little doors.

If you would like to make any of these changes to your garden please contact me, Joy Garnsey, I would love to hear from you!

Tel: 01273 812898

Mob: 07714 405880

e-mail: gardenjoygarnsey@aol.com

info: www.garden-joy.co.uk