Creating Areas in Your Garden

When we moved into our house our garden was a mess, it had vast amounts of decking, but it was built up really high on a platform, with a huge shed on. You could see straight into our neighbours gardens from the decking, which as you can imagine they hated. One side of the garden was lined with huge conifers; which absorbed so much space, and light, they had to go. Other than that the grass was half dead, and there was not a single plant or shrub. Yes, it was a blank canvas, but it has turned out to be a money pit that had to be completely deconstructed. We had to start from scratch. It has taken years to get it right, we are not finished but finally feel like we have a usable garden

When you are planning your garden it is important to consider many factors. For us the main factor was the sun, and creating areas where we can enjoy the sun throughout the day. We have a long garden but it is very narrow, because of this we spent ages thinking about how to set the garden out, where to put sitting areas to get the best out of the weather. 

Now I need to make this clear, I cannot garden at all. Chris is an expert gardener; he spends hours in the garden. My involvement is much more on a consultancy basis. He would never let me hear the last of it f I gave the impression that I was anyway involved the building or planting. 

Our first area gets the sun from sunrise, and enjoys the sun until about 2pm, lovely for breakfast and great for entertaining when friends visit. It is framed with flowers and shrubs on three sides. This gives colour all year round and has been designed in such a way that there are always different flowers in bloom up until October.

The next area gets the sun from about 9am perfect for morning coffee at the weekend. We recently acquired the church pew, Chris sanded and re-stained it, to weather proof it. Again we have planted, and put pots around it.  I love sitting here and reading in the mornings. The sun is gone by about 12 noon, it then creates a refuge from the hot midday sun.

My absolute favourite area is a raised decking area; this is where we have our garden beanbags. They are so comfy, they are from made.com, the colour is exactly what I wanted, and they are just perfect for chilling in the hot summer sun, with a nice glass of wine. We have again framed the area it with pots and foliage so it feels enclosed, perfect for sunbathing. The sun is on here from around 11 am until around 7pm, so perfect for catching rays.

Toby Photo Bombing

And last but not least our little bistro set on our patio, this gets the sun between 2 pm and 8pm. Great for lunch in the shade, and pre dinner drinks after a long day at work. This is the area we use the most, as it is in the shade when the sun is hot and where we can make the most of the evening sunshine.

It has taken 4 years of planning and re shuffling to get our sitting areas exactly where we wanted them to enjoy the best of the weather. We tend to pick up furniture as we go along, generally when they are on offer and we can get a bargain. The plants apart from a few, have mostly been kindly donated from Chris's parents garden, who are mad keen gardeners.