A picture of our garden you won't have seen before.

[Lyn and Malcolm]

Taken this evening from the front bedroom window, Lyn is still watering the garden.

This is part of the front garden, probably about 2/3rds of it.
The sales plant stall is at the top of the picture and you can see the main road.
Down the left hand side is the neighbours big hedge which we cut our side and train clematis up.
The tallest clematis on that hedge was cut down to two foot six inches above the ground in early spring, we have stopped it at the top of the hedge.

The garden will get much more colourfull in the next couple of weeks as lilies and more clematis begin to flower, then the phlox and monarda and a whole load of other plants join in.

Any way here is the picture.

[roiphil]

fantastic garden malacolm, and i like to see that you have lyn still working  whilst you sneak off and show us this wonderful picture

[Lyn and Malcolm]

Phil said

and i like to see that you have lyn still working   whilst you sneak off and show us this wonderful picture

Well it is her garden out front. 

Thanks Phil

[Lyn and Malcolm]

At the top end of the path is the front gate, and the bed to the right of the path is about seven foot deep where our shade plants are under a cherry tree. The bed continues to follow the path down, but narrower at about five foot deep.
Directly below under the window from where I am taking this picture, is what we call the Bay bed which leads to the front door.

The path used to be a straight rough concrete path from front gate to front door, I think it was three years ago we decided to do a big alteration and curve the path, there used to be another lawn under the new path. It may look a bit scalectric track, that is one of those things one has to consider when the garden is open to the public, it is actually wider than we would have liked, but thought must be given to allow two way traffic of visitors, otherwise you are going to get trampled plants. As is normal we did all the work ourselves.

Talking of plants, I have just used GA034S01 to tell me how many different plants are in that front garden. Six hundred and forty three. This of course includes spring bulbs.

Malcolm

[Lyn and Malcolm]

Here is a picture taken on March 8th 2009 showing the bare bones of the front garden, including all those labels, we call it stick city. They do show up pretty badly at that time, all the old growth has been cut off the plants, we leave a lot of old growth on during the winter to help protect the plants.It is not long before the plants obscure the labels with new growth.

The labels are there for two good reasons. One to remind us what the plant is, and two, so that visitors can look to see the name of the plant themselves, which saves us a lot of questions on open days.

We went to a NGS garden this afternoon, nothing is labeled, and yes we wanted to know the name of several of the plants, the owner keeps a book with the names in, but cannot always put a name to the particular plant.

We do get comments from visitors thanking us for labeling the plants.

Note the growth put on by the clematis, particularly by the one to the left of the third fence post down. Compare it with the picture above.

[ideasguy]

That is a lovely set of photos Malcolm. Its really nice to see the layout of your front garden.
It makes me appreciate your collective gardening skills even more.
I am very impressed with everthing I see.
What a transformation in a few months.

Just one of the many things that impress me is how you manage to get so many plants to work together. Ive never been able to manage that in my many years of gardening. I have to be very careful in how I position my plants. With the best gardening reference books at my disposal, I still find one or more plants which don't grow to the proportions it says in the plant description, and other neighbouring plants grow more vigorously than expected and crowd them out.
Take a bow, Lyn and Malcolm!

[Eric Hardy]

Thank you for posting those pictures. I am so impressed Lyn & Malcolm with your garden! What knowledge, organisation and hard work! What a difference three months makes too. I wish our garden looked so orderly in March. I was mildly chastised for being too modest a short time ago. It's all your fault  . How can ordinary humans compete 

[Lyn and Malcolm]

First of all thank you George and Eric, glad you liked the pics.

George
Getting plants to work together is an ongoing thing, don't forget we have been trying for the last 8 years.
It is mostly trial and error. Planting so near of course makes the plants grow taller, watering and feeding has the same result, the tall hedge behind plants doesn't help with the height either, and the hedge sucks the water and nutrients out of our already sandy soil, so we water more its a viscous circle.

So trial and error it is, at the end of the year we walk round with a notebook and list which plant needs to be moved where.
You have heard me say before that it is a job to keep the database of plant positions correct, Lyn doesn't tell me when she moves some of them.

Eric
I am lost for words to answer what you have said about the garden and the gardeners 

Knowledge.....Not too much of that, Lyn remembers a lot of the plant names, but finds that harder as time goes on. Me, well I am very practical.

Organisation........Well I try, but Lyn normally takes no notice.

Hard work......... We both do it. When Lyn tires herself out, she gets short tempered, and me, i just fall asleep.

So I guess we are really just ordinary humans after all. 

Malcolm

[Lyn and Malcolm]

Unless I am told not to    I will post another picture in 2 to 3 weeks time when the colour in the garden intensifies.

Malcolm

[roiphil]

Both brilliant pics its amazing what a difference 2 mths makes in the plant world, looking forward to another picture (of lyn working  ) it must take a lot of work and time to cut back that amount of dead foilage from all those plants, keep up the good worki

[ideasguy]

RE:

Unless I am told not to I will post another picture in 2 to 3 weeks time when the colour in the garden intensifies.

You are more likely to be told to do it than NOT to do it.
I think its a great idea, and I look forward to pics at those intervals all through the season.

I showed those photos to my work colleagues today and they were most suitably impressed 
Very inspirational!

I agree completely about plant planted close together reaching for the sky. Nevertheless, it works well for you!

I see two (of the many)  secrets of your success.
1) I don't see any shrubs in those central borders.
Ive regretted planting some shrubs in my "herbaceous" borders. Each year they get bigger, kill off neighbouring plants.
I'm gradually removing them.

2) You've obviously worked VERY hard to make your garden completely weed free in March and as you've posted in the messages on this forum, all the clematis etc is cut back in good time and the plants are fertilised.
That means getting out there when its <brrrrrrr> outside.
Its well past that time when I get out to my garden due my "projects" on the computer.
By that time I have to remove grass from around the plants, and they don't get a good chance to make early growth.

RE:

at the end of the year we walk round with a notebook and list which plant needs to be moved where

Ah yes... With that large collection of plants, I wish you luck with that task.
In my case the scenario would be
Plant 1 needs to go position A.
But, theres a plant (No 2) in position A
OK  lets move plant No 2 to position B
Ah, but theres already a plant (No 3) in position B
and so on...
A whole bunch of plants could end up sitting on that path!
Ive done that lots of times! Very often, moving Plant 1 to position A doesn't get done the same day!!

[Kathy & Laurie]

Well Malcolm, you and Lyn have great gardens and obviously a lot of hard work goes into maintaining them.

It will be interesting to see your photos as the gardens progress throughout the year for comparison.

We don't have the dilemma of re-arranging plants as you guys have with bigger gardens and more abundant planting schemes.  This is one advantage we have with smaller gardens. 

Laurie.

[Lyn and Malcolm]

George

As you rightly wrote, we don't have shrubs in the centre beds.
We do have a few shrubs in other parts of the garden, but they have to be pruned as standards  so we can grow plants underneath as well.

Weeds we honestly don't get many of them, certainly nothing pernicious (spelling  ) so weeding in March is not a problem. Most of the Clematis are group 3 so do get pruned hard in March, but group 2 only tidied, but we are begining to cut the group 2 rather harder recently to promote more growth from the base, otherwise they get bare at the bottom. And also I am sure that if a goup 2 gets die back, it will be on the old growth not the new. Ok it will make the flowers later, but not worried about that.
It generally is cold when we do the cutting back, and takes several days, Lyn suffers still with her fingers she had the operation on, especially when it's cold.

As Phil mentioned, we have a lot of rubbish to get rid of after all this pruning. The rubbish dump is just one and a quarter miles away, but stupid council only allow you to go there six times a year. They reckon that is the average need per household.
So we have to drive to Wimborne tip which is about 3 miles away, no restriction there, but if the skips that the rubbish gets put in get full, the site is so small that they have to close it for 10 to 15 minutes to allow a lorry to get in and swap the skip for a empty one.

I could rant on about the money making global warming and carbon output debate. I have seen billboards telling people to make sure their tyres on cars are pumped up to the correct pressure, otherwise the car will emit more carbon. But we have to do a round journey of 6 miles instead of 2 1/2 every time we want to get rid of rubbish. Daft to say the least.

Malcolm

[Lyn and Malcolm]

I have added another picture taken today, still not maximum colour yet.
For the sake of clarity have also added a couple more pics as well together with dates
Structures have all but dissapeared under the growth

February 3

March 8

April 12

June 3

June 30


Malcolm

[MitchM]

Beautiful!

Mitch