At the end of 2021 I moved from East Anglia to Brampton in Cumbria which is close to the border with Northumberland. Over the next two years I shall be working in both Norfolk and Cumbria, designing, planting and landscaping gardens and sharing in my blog the way I tackle my own garden.
For many people it’s daunting looking at a new garden and working out where to start. I too am faced with the normal budget constraints, the need to factor in builders putting up scaffolding and leaving their materials everywhere and the fact that a garden is a living thing and will not reach maturity for some time. I need to prioritise my planting and create a garden that supports a wide range of wildlife. This garden will not be built in a day or even a year and I needed to work out a phased approach.
So where did I start. I started the same way I would approach any project and organised a topographical survey just after we moved in. The garden is over an acre and the topographical survey will plot very accurately the layout of the current garden, the footprint of the house and the different levels in the garden that need to be factored in. If the garden is a medium or small size then I tend to measure them myself but an acre normally requires a topographical survey.
Normally I tell people they need to spend a bit of time in their garden before they start working out what they want to change, especially when you move in during the winter. However, I had viewed the house in the summer, probably spent more time looking at the garden than the actual inside and had some very clear ideas from day one. Fortunately for me the garden is largely a blank canvas, so I had the topographical survey back before Christmas and started playing round with ideas.
By Easter I had designed both the front and the back garden. I needed to design the front as it was being submitted with the architects designs to gain planning permission. I am often asked by architects to design a garden to help get plans through and my project was no different. We needed to take trees out, build a new drive, a drainage field for a septic tank and anchor the house into the general landscape.
Planning came through quite quickly and then the fun began. We had already taken down the fir trees along the drive in January to avoid any nesting issues and potential storm damage as most were leaning and in a poor state. The stumps were ground out and we started the endless task of moving 30 years’ worth of compost from the bottom of the garden to the front border. The firs had completely depleted the goodness from the ground, and it is pointless starting a garden without sorting out the soil conditions. As my husband always says, prior preparation prevents …. poor performance.
This Beech is fantastic because it does not take up too much space – it’s tall rather than broad, doesn’t need much looking after and even though the leaves turn brown they stay on the tree during the winter. Its eventual height will help soften the house and make it feel more cocooned. The Kanzan deep pink will work well with the purple and again soften the stark white of the house. I’ve had a Prunus Kanzan in every house I lived in, so this was not going to be an exception.
Next time i’ll share details about what I turned my attention to after the trees…
