Part of our garden is set aside as a cutting garden. As you can see, come June it is brimming over with flowers for cutting, leaving enough flowers in bloom to put on a show and to provide much need food reserves for pollinating insects.
We grow lots of annuals including Cosmos, Zinnias, Cornflowers, Sweet Peas, Foxgloves, Marigolds and Nigella but have also included some perennials such as the Lady’s Mantle (Alchemilla mollis), Lavender, Thrift and Marjorum which line the edges of the beds. Added to this, we grow lots of Dahlias which all seem to have survived the cold winter we experienced, thanks to a thick duvet of mulch. The first flower buds are just forming on the dahlias and once in flower, they will provide cut flowers until the first frosts. They are a must for any cutting patch.
Welcome to our newly updated website. In this occasional blog, we hope to share with you what is going on in our own garden and the exciting projects that we have been busy working on.
We have a young family so our garden has to fulfill many functions to suit all it’s members. It’s a long, narrow garden and when we moved into the house 7 years ago, it was mainly laid to lawn with a concrete patio.
Cottage Garden Planting in Courtyard
We have divided the garden into sections and planted a hedge to divide the courtyard area immediately outside the french doors from the rest of the garden to create an enclosed space.
The ugly concrete patio was replaced with a decked area, to which we added a wooden table and benches and a raised bed with cottage garden style planting. We turned the old coal shed into a potting shed & woodstore and topped it off with a green roof. The delapidated garden fence was taken down and replaced with a brick and flint wall featuring little niches for candles and small pots.
Cutting garden in April
The courtyard garden is followed by a cutting garden divided into beds by reclaimed brick paths. Many of the bricks used for the paths were dug up from the ground under this area which was the site of an outside building many years before.
Cutting garden bed in July.
A willow arch clothed with a climbing rose leads you through to a lawn in a figure-of-eight shape for the children to play on. The borders have been planted up with wildlife-friendly plants with year-round interest in the form of grasses, perennials and lots of bulbs.
Garden border planted for shade.
At the bottom of the garden, two arches with a removable swings lead to the utility area. This accomodates a custom made outside office, two sheds for storage, a treehouse, monkey bars and a compost bin and storage area.
