Prospect and Refuge

Cacadores, pictures as promised.

I've been working on my bungalow and gardens for some years now. Below are progress pictures of my back garden. It had different levels up to eighteen inches higher than the normal ground level before I started and was surrounded by a ridiculous wall of about 1ft high that was only fit to trip and fall over.

I dug it all out and levelled it, starting with the ground nearest the house. The back retaining wall is about to be replaced and the layout will then be complete leaving the bank ready for planting. The garden is 60ft wide by 30ft deep.

The front garden is 60 x 60ft Although I've tidied it up since moving here, it's still a blank canvass and I'm hoping to make a start on it late autumn.





Please wait, more pics to follow.

 

More to follow

 

........And finally, what there is of my front garden at the moment.





Sorry about the many posts, but I'm struggling to load more than three pics at a time. I'm finished now.

 

Like Shiney I find The Yellow Book a really useful guide to gardens that are rarely open to the public that I wouldn't otherwise get to see. I've seen several this year (including one I have driven past all my life and had no idea how big or extensive it was!) and I'm going to see another on Sunday. That one only opens once every few years, its a small garden in a row of houses, but it is reputed to be fabulous; but for the NGS I doubt he would open and/or that I would ever get to know about it. having said that I expect that "getting my garden INTO the yellow book" is a goal in and of itself for some elitists !

There are also some other significant gardens that are open all through the Summer that "donate" a day or two in the year to the NGS - folk can choose to support the NGS by6 visiting the garden on those days, if they so wish ...

The NGS gives about £2.5M a year to charities and (judging from the figures on its website) their running costs are about 20% of the money they take, which doesn't sound too bad to me. Shiney has said in the past he wants to support his local charity, and he does an excellent job in that regard, but that isn't how NGS works - their website says: "The gardens give all the money raised directly to us (including from the sale of teas and plants); the only exceptions being in some cases they ask that a small proportion goes to a nominated local charity."

Shiney has built up a fine local tradition, and is good at getting some interest on this forum too, so gets excellent footfall in support of his hard work and charity, but personally I think the NGS do a great job of giving widespread publicity to what would otherwise be a reactively narrow & local "market"

 

I think "it depends" 'coz a photo such as this is out of context.

If that is the total size of the garden then there are basically two options for someone who wants to use the garden to entertain in - build a terrace / decking next to the house, or build it at the end of the garden.

Next to the house is probably more common, but end-of-garden has the benefit of splitting a party between those in the house and those on the terrace - whereas a terrace adjacent to the house just becomes part of the party going on inside the house.

Having it at the end of the garden means there are two groups, and people can see the other group and wander between them.

The delima of cushions outside is one I would like to solve too! I think the answer is to have a (wooden, say) box built into the furniture, or hidden nearby, that the cushions can be stored in. So you can take a tray of tea, whatever, out there and then sort out the cushions when you get there - rather than having to also make a separate trip(s) with the cushions.

Alternative just sit on bare seats which, for outdoor seating, is usually rather hard-arsed as my Mother would say.

 

Sheal,
You have done so well there and you deserve to be very proud of your achievements as a reward for all that hard work. I can see why you love to live where you live. Looks like paradise to me,
Jenny
thank you for a stroll around your garden today

 

I agree with Jenny, looks really nice there

 

Thanks Jenny and Freddy,

I think the 'paradise' gets a bit lost as we have such high rainfall here. But right now with the sun shining it's beautiful. Driving home from shopping yesterday I could see the beaches in Scotland, one of the bonuses!

 

Thanks a lot: it looks great. Superb lawn. Is it as flat as it looks? Must have been some job. It's interesting how you've divided the back garden into the functional end with the shed and the pretty end with the flowers. What made you get rid of the old shed?
And...although you wrote:

.....one could say that you've used the corners very much as prospects. Pure practicality, for planting and weeding and seeing would demand you place the flower terrace near the house. But you've got it as a far prospect which invites you to walk
View attachment 9169
over to it. You've gone for the textbook long vistas - making the most of the length of the garden and even the flowers have the mid-ground obstacle and hunters' need represented by the birds' water table.

In the front you've used the corner as another prospect, marked by what looks like an
View attachment 9173
ornamental tree. And the corner will be protected and partially obscured by a line of shrubs - again, making another corner look like an enticing refuge.

You can't escape your inner hunter.
I reckon!

 

Thank you for the compliment. Yes, the lawn is as flat as it looks, if you have a keen eye it's not difficult to achieve. The old shed was here when I moved in and being made of ply it was rotting and falling apart, so it had to go. As it stood on a concrete base I replaced it and extended the concrete for my greenhouse to stand beside it.

I wouldn't describe it as text book long vistas. The layout is not by choice but what was really dictated and practical. As I said before the garden is wide but not deep. The flower bed is only 18ft from the back of my bungalow. The greenhouse is at the other end to catch the most sunlight, it faces south west. The reason the bird bath is where it is, partly because of the amount of cats in my area, so the birds can see them coming and partly because my old dog is buried underneath it, she loved to drink from it.

Nothing in my front garden is planted in corners as such. Once again what's there has been dictated, in this case by my house deeds. I am not allowed to plant trees and shrubs withing nine feet of my boundaries, the hedges were already there. I have all the main services running through my gardens, gas, sewers, electricity and my own drains running along side the drive, which makes it difficult with regards planting.

So, my own thoughts on what you have said about the choices we make and why we make them unfortunately don't ring true in my case I think. I work with what I've got and even with the restrictions I have or haven't got, I still err on the side of practicality. That's my nature, I'm not a person that likes 'fussy' things.

I don't believe I'm a hunter at all and with respect, if you knew my character better you would understand why.

 

Well, it's only a theory and one could say it's all rubbish, perhaps. Yet, yet it seems to me that although everyone here could say they planted things for practical reasons, nevertheless, they all end up with something similar: the English garden. And although you might not have especially selected the corners and long vistas of yours, nevertheless the corners are now prospects and the length of the garden is emphasised.

In other countries they also put things there for 'practical' reasons, often for exactly the same reasons. Yet end up with something completely different. The French, for example, just don't have the same kind of sentimental fantasy about a beautiful green countryside paradise like we do. It's Ok there to put advertising hoardings, scrap yards and concrete pylons in the middle of beautiful valleys. The French formal garden and its suburban followers, with their hedge patterns, stone, dust walks and everything in lines is not just happenchance, but presumably results from many French peoples' fundamental attitude about what a garden should be: something that is made for people to walk in and which has to look like nature didn't make it. And if you're not used to them, they can make you feel uncomfortable being in them. We tend to look for other things in our gardens, not least something calming and I can easily feel more or less comfortable in most English gardens because, I think, I understand what the owner was trying to achieve.

 

You'd need to have a party every week to make it worth having that eyesore, I reckon! I don't know - would you find that a comfortable place to relax of an afternoon?

I think that having your own bit of natural paradise is not what's motivating these designers at all. When I look at things like that, or this:

I reckon what I'm seeing is a garden for people who don't garden and who would rather replicate the one place that couch potatos feel comfortable in, that is, their own living room. When they took the photo they must have hid the wide-screen telly that's normally there!