Dreaming of a beautiful garden

ANY_CHANCE

Thanks Skippy i will have a look at freecycle when i get back later wish they would come over and do a make over

I think i will visit those lovely peeps GFS and see if they have any offerings they may throw in some good advice too

Keeping_Motivated

Just butting in here to say I am sure that the other people who had open gardens would feel complented if you asked for advice/cuttings, I know I would be!

Well I would be if I actually had ANY plants to give them a cutting from Thats why I will continue lurking on this thread to pick up any ideas

Good luck with your garden, at leat it was presentable enough to even have it 'open' so must be a nice canvas to now get creative with.

KM x

newlywed

Should you plan a colour theme for your garden? Or not?

I can't decide whether to do all flame kind of colours -oranges reds etc or whether that will look a bit pants

It's only a small garden.

WestonDave

The good thing about getting advice from neighbours is that they probably have the same soil as you, so things that grow well in their garden will probably do well in yours. Sometimes you can go to a garden centre and pick all sorts of nice looking plants which don't suit your garden (but then making mistakes is part of the fun albeit a bit costly!).

Davesnave

newlywed wrote: »

Should you plan a colour theme for your garden? Or not?

I can't decide whether to do all flame kind of colours -oranges reds etc or whether that will look a bit pants

It's only a small garden.

Some gardeners would say that will be too limiting, because those colours aren't easily available early in the season. They won't be restful either, but that's a matter of personal taste. If you have a spring themed garden with lots of bulbs, aquilegias & stuff like that, you can overlay it later in the season with dahlias, red hot pokers, rudbeckias and echinaceas later on and have the best of both worlds.

newlywed

Ok thanks. So that won't give good colour early on. Hmmm.

Other thoughts were just to fill the whole garden with lots of different osteopernums(?) erm daisy type plants but I guess if I do that then there will only be a limited flowering season too.

Can you tell I don't really do gardening

madmum33

I'm going through the same process at the moment. There are some excellent websites with guides to garden design, do a google search. They all say to start with a framework, all year interest from trees, shrubs and foliage, then add your flowers with herbaceous perennials, bulbs and finally annuals. A good way is to start with white flowers then add other colours.

Good luck!

ANY_CHANCE

We have clay type soil in our area so i presume that would mean it is more acidic??

The next door neighbours plant that i forget the name of is blue (is it hydrangea) does that indicate something? though we have one that is white.

doesnt it depend on the acidity = what colour they turn out to be?

greenfingeredsteve

hydrageas love being moist theyll do there best in a water rententive soil like yours i presume

Davesnave

ANY_CHANCE wrote: »

We have clay type soil in our area so i presume that would mean it is more acidic??

The next door neighbours plant that i forget the name of is blue (is it hydrangea) does that indicate something? though we have one that is white.

doesnt it depend on the acidity = what colour they turn out to be?

Clay isn't necessarily acidic, but if a hydrangea is blue, and hasn't just come from the nursery, the soil is acidic. My clay soil is very alkaline due to underlying rocks.