Monthly Archives: March 2009

Site Visit – Fruit and Vegetable Garden Completed

Fruit and Veg growing is certainly a growing trend. We built several productive gardens last year and will be going back to photograph their progress later this year once there’s some foliage!

Meanwhile here’s one of this year’s new projects. This is a great Before and After example. A productive garden in the making. We’ve used FSC sourced timbers to create an easily manageable space with room for fruit and 5 raised vegetable beds to allow crop rotation and a bed for perennials such as asparagus.

The fruit has been planted (raspberries, apples, plums, blackcurrants, jostaberries, gooseberries, and blackberries) and the compost bin built. Here’s to a productive spring

Below is the original plan that we created for the client plus a couple of other pics

If you need help creating your fruit and vegetable garden – please Contact Us

The most powerful vegetable grower on the planet?

Amused by this article in the Telegraph about Michelle Obama starting to dig the new vegetable garden at The White House while wearing Jimmy Choo boots!

I hope Michelle, who will apparently be tending the garden with the Commander in Chief (hmm, right) realises how much work is entailed in veg growing. It’s always best to start small and get some successes under your belt (or in your stomach) rather than creating a re-enactment of The Good Life in one go.

UPDATE – Here’s a plan of the garden

New Design – High Terrace Garden

Another new design added to the website. This one is a Newport garden that was originally two levels, unfortunately the upper level was over 3 metres higher than the patio. The design maximised the upper level creating over 100 square metres of level lawn. The lower patio design featured a sweeping set of steps and dramatic up-lit wall panels made from sandstone. Check out more details of our design for this challenging garden here.

Because we’re based in South Wales we get a lot of sloping or terraced gardens to look at. If we can help you with yours please Contact Us

New Design – Knot Garden with Holly Standards

We’re finally getting around to adding some more recent designs to our gallery. Here’s a knot garden that we put in for a client last year along the front of their contemporary house in Cardiff. We’re pleased how it is establishing. Knot Gardens are great as they are low maintenance (trim once or twice a year) and provide evergreen structure and form to the space. With this one we set off the box hedging with slate cube planters with topiary holly and golden flint gravel. Other male hollies were planted elsewhere in the garden to ensure berries. For an extra touch we added blue silver Crocus tommasinianus to the containers for early spring interest.

You can find the full detail and lots of photos and design images here

If you’d like us to design and plant something similar for your garden then please Contact Us

The ultimate sign of Spring’s approach

You know that Spring is on the way when you catch a glimpse of a clump of snowdrops. These fantastic hardy woodland plants are traditionally seen as one of the first signs of winter’s passing. To grow them successfully though they must be planted “in the green” – i.e. as plants rather than as bulbs. Don’t be tempted to buy as dry bulbs as the majority will probably fail. And once you buy them as plants get them in the ground quick.

We buy snowdrops from specialist growers around this time of year and look to offer them to our clients through the spring. Planted en masse they look great. And you can plant them in the lawn as they’ll have finished their cycle by the time it comes to give the lawn it’s first cut.

Another tip is to plant the double form Galathus nivalis ‘Flore Pleno’ which for mass plantings bulks and divides more quickly. If they do come up “blind” (i.e. they don’t flower) in the first year, don’t worry, they will the next year and every year after that.

The Future of Garden Design

We believe that viewing garden designs in three dimensions massively helps our clients to understand our vision and to quickly engage with the possibilities that their garden has to offer.

This movie shows where the technology could go in the future – beautiful.