INSPIRATION

cool restrained palette, fresh greens and whites and the odd bit of blue ... filtered light with a woodlandy vibe ... channeling Sissinghurst still. I want to ensure that any evergreens don't loom too loomily, hm, have to be careful there

PLANT PALETTES

So, this is the flavour of the planting. A bit woodlandy and with a limited colour palette of whites, greens and blues.

The Raised Beds

These are a real challenge. Madly awkward shapes with limited space, east facing with little direct sunlight. Euw. At the moment I'm thinking exotic, architectural planting with an evergreen slant. I spend a lot of time in the house in Winter and therefore this garden has to perform well during the winter months - hence the large amount of hard landscaping here. This end of the house, north east facing is dark and I really don't want lots of bare earth as my only view during the ever longer winters. So what kind of planting? Ferns? Large, evergreen if possible tho' tree ferns can look odd with their stubby stems.

The sketch is showing a rather twee arrangement with lollipopped standards - tipo Bay, portuguese laurel, photinia ... which I hate .... maybe even a standard viburnum tinus? .. whatever's cheapest frankly at this sort of stature ... it could look cute tho' a bit twee, not sure if it's this kinda garden really. Let's rethink this ....

woodlandy vibe

Around the Pergola and on the north side, I'm channeling the Nuttery at Sissinghurst (delusions of grandeur? surely not). Arching forms of the Corylus (tho' am happy to go with any other plant with similar cup shape arching form tho' i like the idea of coppice capability to control the bulk of these plants) underplanted with plants to provide structure up to knee/hip height and groundcover. To include: ferns, spring flowering bulbs, hellebore, ornamental cow parsley type stuff, aquilegias. Again, am thinking texture rather than massive use of colour here as this is still going to be very visible from Moving away from the blocks of planting here ... I don't mind moving away from this vibe but I want the qualities provided by the Corylus of height and some screening ...









The other possibility is to go with a much more stylised look letting more light through but this then defeats the object of semi-screening.

To date I've been seduced by the multi-stem idea rather than lollipop because of the screening potential and to introduce an informality visible from the house ..?

North West facing large border

This border is large and like all the others, a bloody awkward space. It follows the path toward the Pergola and my vision for this border is to be full, with interesting textures, blocks of 'woodland' character planting but with more structural form - a kind of halfway house between architectural and traditional woodland planting






Another intention here is to partially obscure the view beyond the pergola in order to help define the division in the space between one garden area and the next. At the moment I'm seduced by Corylus still but am open to change.

I think height is necessary around the pergola so as to compete with and balance its massive proportions (!) and also to perform the task of semi screening what lies beyond ..

Borders close to the house

To the left, east facing, are a three raised beds, one incorporating a built in bench. They are rendered but haven't been painted yet. I am struggling to know what I plant in these really awkward planting spaces! There is also an l-shaped border between the path and patio. I'm thinking architectural, evergreen planting for the area closest to the house.

The Plan

This the plan of what I currently am looking at out of the window. All is in place and the scary Pergola is up and built.