Getting there

As you will realise from recent blogs from both of us, the Fox & I have been obsessed by thoughts about our garden.

As I have said we were not immediately bowled over by the designs proposed to us. We have been trying to clarify in our minds what we do want &, to some extent, what is practical. What we don’t want is something that looks fabulous now but which will be impossible for us to maintain with the result we have another jungle in ten years time.

We’ve had our noses buried in garden design books. We’ve watched garden makeover programmes. We’ve kept our eyes open as we’ve gone out & about, peering into other people’s gardens, noticing path materials, trying to work out what attracts us & what does not.

We finally think we’ve got an outline idea of what we want. We’ve drawn a rough sketch which we can both agree on. The time has come to talk once more to the designer to get something more exact on paper & to check over some of the practicalities. We’ve not even thought about the planting beyond “Here a raised bed for perennials & few annuals”, “Here trees”, “Here shrubs”. But at least I think we’ve got something more definite for a designer to work on.

Ultimately we just want something that gives us pleasure to look out on but which doesn’t involve a lot of work to maintain. Neither is up to the latter &, as we grow older, we can’t see that changing. But we do want to enjoy sitting outside occasionally when it is warm. And for that we want privacy, to not be too overlooked by all our neighbours. We do want to encourage the wildlife to continue to visit, though a few less slugs & snails & other pests wouldn’t come amiss – my basil bush has just been consumed by cabbage white caterpillars, our hostas are lacy from slugs & snails, our marigolds under attack from blackfly. We certainly don’t see us sitting at the far end of the garden or even venturing down there that often though I am hoping that with appropriate paths I will be able to go down there on my Mean Machine some of the time.

But first, before I contact the designer, I want to sort out a few websites & pictures of the sort of things we have in mind. Maybe that way he will have a better understanding of what we want. If not, it will be time for us to try to find another landscape designer to try. There must be someone who can understand our vision & turn it into a reality.