On May 20, 9:48*pm, Marie-Louise wrote:
Hello!

We've recently moved back to England and now have a new garden to think
about!

There is lots to do and lots of problems to contend with. It's quite a
small space (about 1.25 acres) and slopes away in two directions - down
from the house, but also side to side on a camber. At the moment there's
a large terrace near the house, but almost all the rest is effectively a
wild flower meadow (it doesn't look horribly uncared for, so I think the
previous owners deliberately kept it "natural").

Anyway, we want to clear all that away and make a proper garden! We're
thinking of making the terrace smaller and adding a big square lawn with
herbacious borders around it. Then we want to plant up a lot of box
hedges to make four mini-gardens with hedge-lined walkways between them:
a kitchen garden (obviously!), a shrubbery/rockery garden, an eye-
catching cut flower / flashy annuals garden, and a traditional cottage
garden.

Finally, we'll have a woodland area separate from the hedged gardens,
with a few trees, alpines giving ground cover, and maybe a pond. Also
tuck away the compost heap somewhere here!

Well.... when you write it down it looks like an overwhelming amount of
work!! If anyone has any good ideas for where to start, what to get done
first to make an early difference, that would be great! What we're most
worried about is how to deal with the slopes when planting the box
hedges: should we plant them off-straight to get the perspective right?
That sounds quite hard. I guess we have a 2-3 year timescale in mind to
get the basics set up (obviously new trees and shrubs will take much
longer than that to come to full size). Is that realistic?

Also any thoughts on planting schemes etc. Exciting times for us, please
chip in!!



} Marie-Lou {- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

It's up to you mate! :-) I have about an acre and a half. I have
planted trees for firewood (coppice) and only cultivate a small
vegetable patch aside from immediately round the house. I have ceated
a wildlife pond too.
I run it as a snake sanctuary as we seem to have a few.