Post by tigerlily on Jun 17, 2009 20:59:11 GMT
I've muttered about working in the front garden from time to time in my posts about the genesis of the back garden.
Today I went out and bought some new bedding plants for both gardens, partly because the back garden had some awfully bare-looking areas (I like my beds to look full rather than well spaced out) and partly because after a big storm several months ago we lost two conifers out the front and have never planted anything to replace them.
I picked up a couple of gorgeous pinks and some other ground covering flowering plants at Aldi for very little indeed. Then I drove round to another store that has a small selection of very nice plants and picked up a delphinium, a couple of mums, and lots of other plants which I cannot identify. Oh, and a lily of some description.
This is still a bit of a work in progress, too. The lawn needs a lot of work, there are a couple of box plants in front that need replacing (and I really want to prune them, but AH goes spare if I do because he's had such trouble getting them to 'take'), and the left hand side is incredibly shady.
We have real problems with shade because the sun is behind the house for the majority of the day. The very top near the pavement does get some sun some of the time, but most of the garden is in permanent shade. We're set back between the neighbouring houses, as is every other house along the row. We have a longer front garden but smaller back garden - I'd prefer it the other way around, I think, overall, as I envy my neighbours their lovely big patios and bigger space. Not that we don't have a lovely big patio, it just happens to be in need of a bit of a tidy-up!
Anyway: this is the view across to the left from the front steps.
...and looking back toward the house from the pavement:
Left side of path, after a darned good pruning of some shrub that was obscuring the twisted hazel:
View of the front, or as much of it as I can get in - we have the one half of the garages for the row in front of us, which helps block more sunlight:
The windowboxes outside the kitchen - planted up by AH this time around, they're usually his domain but I planted them up previously as a surprise for when he came back from Florida early in March:
Delphinium at the back, lily in front, and some kind of plant with big showy flowers, one pink and one white. Excuse the way they look all huddled together - this is the space in between where the conifers used to be - you can see the remnants of one to the left, or the foliage coming off the stump, and the stump of the other to the right. The whole area is full of old roots, and the only way I could get anything in was to dig down and cut out the roots as I found them. Some of them were just too big to cut!
This crop shows the very weedy little peony that I dug out from the other side of the path and replanted. I hadn't a clue what it was. It must I think have self-seeded from the main plant, which is in the middle of the right-hand border. Apparently, they usually are grown from a bulb that develops and fuels the plant's growth. You might just be able to glimpse two tiny little leaves up in the right hand quadrant. They belong to a walnut sapling - a squirrel had buried two walnuts in the front lawn, and both had taken root and put out leaves and tap roots! They'd been there since the winter, but the warm wet weather of the last few days has brought them on a treat.
I decided we may as well replace the conifers with a walnut - hopefully it will continue to grow!
The pots are also AH's job. You can just glimpse my Frog Prince peeping out of the top one. The hortensias/hydrangeas, whatever you want to call them, are his pride and joy - to the right.
Henscomb, two mums and a glossy green-leaved plant with big showy scarlet flowers - you can just see the buds of them to the left. Replacements for the Stieffmutters that were there. The yellowing stuff is leaves on the primroses, I don't know whether to remove them or just leave them to die back naturally.
The lavender is shooting off everywhere, it is in full bloom just now but I think I might have to consider making lavender sachets for the drawers just to get rid of some of it!
So, there you have it. Our front garden!
Today I went out and bought some new bedding plants for both gardens, partly because the back garden had some awfully bare-looking areas (I like my beds to look full rather than well spaced out) and partly because after a big storm several months ago we lost two conifers out the front and have never planted anything to replace them.
I picked up a couple of gorgeous pinks and some other ground covering flowering plants at Aldi for very little indeed. Then I drove round to another store that has a small selection of very nice plants and picked up a delphinium, a couple of mums, and lots of other plants which I cannot identify. Oh, and a lily of some description.
This is still a bit of a work in progress, too. The lawn needs a lot of work, there are a couple of box plants in front that need replacing (and I really want to prune them, but AH goes spare if I do because he's had such trouble getting them to 'take'), and the left hand side is incredibly shady.
We have real problems with shade because the sun is behind the house for the majority of the day. The very top near the pavement does get some sun some of the time, but most of the garden is in permanent shade. We're set back between the neighbouring houses, as is every other house along the row. We have a longer front garden but smaller back garden - I'd prefer it the other way around, I think, overall, as I envy my neighbours their lovely big patios and bigger space. Not that we don't have a lovely big patio, it just happens to be in need of a bit of a tidy-up!
Anyway: this is the view across to the left from the front steps.
...and looking back toward the house from the pavement:
Left side of path, after a darned good pruning of some shrub that was obscuring the twisted hazel:
View of the front, or as much of it as I can get in - we have the one half of the garages for the row in front of us, which helps block more sunlight:
The windowboxes outside the kitchen - planted up by AH this time around, they're usually his domain but I planted them up previously as a surprise for when he came back from Florida early in March:
Delphinium at the back, lily in front, and some kind of plant with big showy flowers, one pink and one white. Excuse the way they look all huddled together - this is the space in between where the conifers used to be - you can see the remnants of one to the left, or the foliage coming off the stump, and the stump of the other to the right. The whole area is full of old roots, and the only way I could get anything in was to dig down and cut out the roots as I found them. Some of them were just too big to cut!
This crop shows the very weedy little peony that I dug out from the other side of the path and replanted. I hadn't a clue what it was. It must I think have self-seeded from the main plant, which is in the middle of the right-hand border. Apparently, they usually are grown from a bulb that develops and fuels the plant's growth. You might just be able to glimpse two tiny little leaves up in the right hand quadrant. They belong to a walnut sapling - a squirrel had buried two walnuts in the front lawn, and both had taken root and put out leaves and tap roots! They'd been there since the winter, but the warm wet weather of the last few days has brought them on a treat.
I decided we may as well replace the conifers with a walnut - hopefully it will continue to grow!
The pots are also AH's job. You can just glimpse my Frog Prince peeping out of the top one. The hortensias/hydrangeas, whatever you want to call them, are his pride and joy - to the right.
Henscomb, two mums and a glossy green-leaved plant with big showy scarlet flowers - you can just see the buds of them to the left. Replacements for the Stieffmutters that were there. The yellowing stuff is leaves on the primroses, I don't know whether to remove them or just leave them to die back naturally.
The lavender is shooting off everywhere, it is in full bloom just now but I think I might have to consider making lavender sachets for the drawers just to get rid of some of it!
So, there you have it. Our front garden!