A garden I designed,planted and now maintain

23 comments

Here’s a garden I took on about 5 years ago.

This is the rear garden

All the hard landscaping was present but other than a few conifers and a couple of flowering cherry trees there was no planting at all.

The soil was bare or completely weed filled. It took me a few weekly visits to clear the ground and do the planting.The client couldn’t afford to pay me to do more than just over an hour a week.

Most of the evergreen perennials were grown on my plant nursery and I bought in a few shrubs from a couple of wholesale nurseries in the area.

I would estimate it took me about 8 hours to clear the garden of weed and do the planting. I was given a free hand to plant what I like but had to remember that in future I would need to be able to maintain the whole garden in 1 hour 15 minutes a week which is all the customer could afford to pay.

Another shot of the rear garden showing the 10 foot deep 50 foot long main border

and here is the front garden

I planted mainly evergreen ground spreading or clump forming plants and a selection of small shrubs that wouldn’t require too much pruning. Covering as much bare soil as possible is imo the best way to reduce work. Each perennial plant probably requires less than 2 minutes work a year and the ground hugging plants such as ajuga,campanula,thyme and dwarf dianthus even less than that. The bigger shrubs take perhaps 10 minutes a year each to keep nicely in shape.

The garden has colour all year round as I’ve planted a sprinkling of winter flowering heathers and polyanthus to give winter colour.

The client is on a very tight budget but I do supply about 40 bedding plants a year ( pelargoniums/begonia/bizzy Lizzie) to give added summer colour

Penstemmon also provide colour from July to early November and I’ve planted some lovely rudbeckia which are virtually zero maintenance other than a once a year cutting back as they don’t require dead heading.

I’ve also planted about 24 bedding dahlias which I don’t lift and they’ve survived well over the past 5 years and provide colour from July to the first hard frosts.Effectively they are perennial plants at bedding plant prices.

I’m pleased with the results and I do indeed maintain this garden in 75 minutes a week for approximately 35 weeks per year.

Each week I cut the two lawns,trim the lawn edges and spend the remaining 55 minutes hoeing and pruning as required.

Here are photos of 3 of the bedding dahlias planted at this garden. To me they’re a bargain. 24 of these from the local garden centre costs £6 and they’ve flowered every year for 5 years and all but one survived the last winter which was much colder and wetter than usual,. They grow to a height of about 15 inches and the flowers are 2-3 inches across.

• 29 Aug, 2010
• 10 likes

More blog posts by anchorman