Littlelarford's Blog

Planning and designing

Posted on 19 Oct, 2007 4 comments

Well, the underplanting is all done and now we’ve started the tulips. We’re trying a new approach this year – carefully colour theming the various areas of the garden. The front garden will be pastel shades of pink and mauve with touches of lemon and white. In direct contrast, the back garden will be in striking shades of yellows, reds and oranges.

It has to be almost like a military operation actually sorting and labelling almost 20,000 tulips in 100 varieties into different colour ranges, heights and flowering times. This year we’ve also devised a numbering system for the planting stage – we mark out each area to be planted with a non-toxic line marking spray and then give it a number. This number corresponds with the chosen colour on our plan ( the plan alone seems to have taken days to work out.) Remember painting by numbers? well this is planting by numbers !!!

All this sounds a bit complicated but it seems to be working and has taken some of the guess work out of choosing colours, heights etc. whilst also trying to plant at the same time.

We’ve probably planted about a quarter of the bulbs so far.
We’ll be in the garden again tomorrow morning – dibbers at the ready !!!

Comments

Maple

20 Oct, 2007

Can't wait to see the end results!! Sounds like it's going to be spectacular. Keep up the good work :)

Spritzhenry

26 Oct, 2007

I have nothing but admiration for such dedicated people as you - and would love to see the spectacle - but I'd be very interested to know what you do with your garden after the amazing spring show finishes. Do you plant annuals to fill the spaces or have you got shrubs and perennials in between?

Spritzhenry

26 Oct, 2007

Sorry, I really should have looked at your website before asking you that question! Love the pictures I briefly looked at and will spend time exploring the garden via the site. It really does look wonderful.

Littlelarford

29 Oct, 2007

Haven't logged on for a day or two spritz. Thanks for your comments and glad you like the website. In answer to your query, after the tulips have finished flowering they're all pulled out and found new homes with friends, neighbours, horticultural society members etc., though not all tulip bulbs flower well the second year. We then prepare the soil well with compost and fish, blood and bone fertilizer. After that comes the mammoth job of planting approx. 4,000 geraniums, begonias, standard fuchsias and many more varieties of bedding plants. This year we trialled lilies and were quite pleased with the results so next summer we plan to add hundreds of lilies to the display.
We are quite a new garden and this is why we decided to use spring and summer bedding to fill any gaps between the shrubs and perennials, and most people love to see a real splash of colour in a garden!

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