"Our First Garden"
Shrewsbury Flower Show 2009 gold medal winner
Purpose
This design is for a rear garden with the purpose of showing what can be achieved quickly, cheaply and relatively simply.
It is based upon the scenario of a young couple renting a very normal affordable type of home, and as it is their first home and they will only be living in the house for perhaps as little as 4 years. This means they want to have a garden which is useful and looks good quickly, but on a limited income they don't want to invest too much money on improving the outside of their home when they will probably move on within 4 years.
They are not expert gardeners but they have picked up a few ideas from watching gardening programmes on the TV and from visiting garden centres.
They have tried to create something slightly different and special by using cheap and easily obtainable hard landscape materials in a creative way. By keeping the construction as simple as possible such as avoiding the need to cut slabs has enabled them to do the work themselves and so keep costs down.
The couple are reasonably environmentally conscious and are keen to 'do their bit' (and try and save some money in the process) - so they have bought a water butt and a compost bin and are trying to grow some vegetables for the very first time. Because they have no previous experience of growing vegetables and because there is limited garden space they are not following any traditional vegetable growing conventions.
The details
The garden is 5 metres wide and 6 metres long with plain 1.5m high fencing on all sides. It is level and roughly faces south west with adequate but not especially good soil.
The design is deliberately simple to avoid the relatively small space becoming over fussy and is based around three elliptical areas of paving (two main areas for general circulation and activity and one smaller one for a barbecue).
The use of second hand broken tiles is because they are cheap and easy to obtain and help to tonally connect the floor of the garden to the colour of the house. The areas of plain grey paving slabs provide practical areas of hard surface whilst their shape and the use of broken tiles help to them to be a design feature (rather than just a area of paving) and prevents them from becoming too dominant.
Timber screens are used to help give added form and structure to the garden as well as providing important screening to the water butt and compost bin - and is used to disguise / conceal the basic tub containing the multi stemmed birch tree.
The planting
The planting arrangement has attempted to employ many of the usual principles of planting design such as balance, harmony and contrast together with as much year round interest as possible - but not in an excessive way - to reflect the simpler horticultural skills of the residents.
The planting has also been chosen for maximum quick visual effect as well as to provide a small amount of vegetables and herbs.
Sweet corn, chard, cabbage, runner beans, provide height, bold colour and foliage contrast whilst chillies provide a level of exotic interest.
Reliable and easy to care for ornamental plants such as 'Sambucus nigra 'Black Lace', Crocosmia, Sedum 'Autumn Joy', Achillia and Miscanthus sinensis 'Morning Light' along with wall trained shrubs and climbers provide a range of foliage colour and form, flower colour and vertical accents.
The multi stemmed birch is the one expensive plant - which was bought in a plant sale by the owners to celebrate their new home. Rather than plant the tree they are temporarily keeping it in a large tub and will take it with them when they move house.