When we moved in to Bracken House six years ago, the gardens were unsightly and tatty, while the land surrounding the gardens was overgrown and full of weeds. After a year of ‘seeing what comes up’ we decided to get in a team of landscape gardeners who ripped up the old borders and lawns and transformed the gardens.
The work on the gardens and adjacent meadows was completed in early summer 2010 and I then tried to maintain the gardens myself. After four years of struggling, I decided that I wanted to sit back and enjoy the garden, and not spending all my time weeding and hoeing.
The original border before the patio stones were cleaned.
This is where Gardens 2 U stepped in to help. Gardens 2 U are a family run gardening team based in nearby Underwood, and I asked them to step in and help work with me on the garden maintenance. After tackling the jungle of weeds around the front garden, I asked them to re-plant the flower borders directly in front of the property.
Newly planted front flower border.
These flower borders consisted of four standard holly trees, along with a few Skimmia and a host of bergenia. One of the holly trees was dead, as was the one it replaced, and the other three were very stressed with hardly any leaves and a lot of dead branches. The Skimmia too were pale and not healthy at all. A quick test of the soil revealed why plants were struggling in this border.
The soil was almost sand like and was very compacted. Under the top couple of inches was a layer of clay on which the old drive had been sitting. It was obvious that the top soil used in this border had no organic matter and hence no nutrients. It was decided to dig the top three or four inches of soil out and replace it with peat based compost. This compost was then forked into the underlying clay soil to give the border some texture and substance.
The main front entrance into the house now has a pleasing look.
Once the soil was suitable for planting the gardener and myself visited Derby Garden Centre where we selected plants that were evergreen, to give a good year-round display, and would grow well in this situation, which was partial shade, seeing the sun in the morning and early afternoon.
The front of the house from the drive.
After a couple of visits to the garden centre, we finally had enough plants for the border and planting was completed towards the end of October to give the plants time to establish before winter. The plant choice was mainly conifers, junipers and rhododendrons, with a scattering of small flowering shrubs in between. A feature pine was also planted in the middle of the border with four standard cotoneasters, two on either side.
I was very pleased with the outcome, although a few more plants are required to fill in remaining gaps. The plants were selected to give interest as they grew and given a few years, they will fill out to cover the entire area with a mass of foliage and flowers. The overall cost of £615 for labour, £750 for plants and £65 for compost (total £1,430) was worth every penny.
