Let me lead you up the garden path..,

Have I taken you for a tour of the garden yet? I don't remember doing that so let me make amends.
It's not a huge garden but has lots of possibilities. Let's start with the front garden. This is how it looked when we first moved in.













The front garden is hardly touched at present; my aim is to turn it over to flowers completely with no grass whatsoever and a windy path cutting through it all for me to access the plants and, of course, the weeds. The garden is elevated, about eye height and is long and narrow, tapering off to a steep embankment down to the road. There are six steps to the front door and I have lots of pots and an old tin bath crammed with violas to provide cheery and instant colour on these steps. I always use pots to brighten up a dull area. It helps me feel like I have done some gardening and gives me time to think up what I actually want to do in that space. As I get used to what the space is used for my original plans invariably change so a stop gap of pots stops me making so many irreversable mistakes.
I cut back an old gnarled pyracantha which may have been planted to stop someone from climbing over the wooden bannister and getting onto the little square of decking directly outside the french windows of our summer drawing room. I've learnt to my cost before that if you don't fully remove a root system of a pyracantha the darn thing will continue to push forward with it's sharp, thick needles just waiting to spike an unsuspecting visitor. They are fantastic plants for many situations but I'm not a fan of them in my own garden. So this was dug up by Luke after a two hour sweat producing struggle that I had with it before admitting defeat.






It is now replaced with a pale blue wisteria which is being grown there to frame the french windows and hang it's racemes like a curtain in the early summer. The colour scheme before was red and yellow (with two leggy forsythias planted too close to the old pyracantha) but is now apricot (three old roses) and blue (2 clematis). I've underplanted with Gentians and upright lobellia for the first year, just to soften the effect. I've also dug up a sad looking shrub and replaced it with an evergreen honeysuckle. It is easy to plant int he summer time when most things look fabulous but we need to keep a thought for how it will look in the deepest winter when we are desperate for some life in the garden. This honesysuckle will provide colour and shape when other things are dormant. At the base of the honeysuckle and at the bottom of the steps down to the garden from the deck is a lavender. All these scented plants should attract insects which may prove irritating if I'm trying to sit peacefully on the deck but it's a good thing to be reminded that we share our gardens with a multitude of life and have no more right to be there than they do. A garden teeming with insects is more interesting than a sterile one with no extra movement of tiny butterfly wings and dragonflies or the buzzing of a bee. On the little square of decking stands an old chimney stack which I top with annuals in a pot. They drape over the sides like a frothy cloud of smoke. A painted wooden chair looks out - it's always nice to have somewhere to sit and enjoy a cup of tea whilst working.