Now we've pretty much got the front garden planted satisfactorily, we're turning our attention to the rear garden.
This one is a little bit more tricky.
We have a labrador dog to consider in our design. They are notorious eaters of anything they can get their faces into. Consequently, our rear garden is fenced off with green plastic fencing, about 18 inches high, just to keep her out of the areas we don't want to be disturbed - which is pretty much all of our borders around the edge of the lawn.
It's not very attractive to look at, but it's the only way to keep the borders protected. We have tried it with the fencing removed and she plods straight into them. The thing is we have some plants that are poisonous to pets, so this is a prime concern of ours. She is currently getting over an intestinal infection that was diagnosed by our vet., so we're having to be extremely careful with her. We don't know how or what the infection was, but to be safe we are keeping all the borders fenced off now.
In the middle of all these borders is a bit of lawn for her benefit. You simply can't have a nice looking lawn when you have a dog, because inevitably they have to do their 'business', even when they've been taken for a walk elsewhere for that purpose.
So, with all that we are left with small borders around the edge of the lawn for all of our plants. It's not the ideal set-up so we are looking to extend our borders by sacrificing some of the lawn.
It's still a work in progress at the moment as we can't decide on the best layout plan. It's actually more of a challenge than the front garden, but we'll get there in the end. (Watch this space
)
Laurie.
