Creating a new garden in November (ie this week!)

Fulham_Mark

We have a patch of tatty land 18ft x 18ft. The southern side has a 4 story building next to it so it doesn't get lots of light. There are also 3 large trees on the east side that take quite a lot of water from the soil.

Not ideal.

It used to be grass with bushes and flowers in spring but people parked on it and reduced it to mud.

We now have £150 worth of donations for plants/bulbs to improve it. yes - people are willing to part with cash to get a nice garden!

We really want to get started on this as it will massively improve the area and stop people from parking on it again.

Any ideas for plants that will deal with being planted now and last through winter??

We can do lots of bulbs but we really want something down now so that it looks like a garden not a place to leave your white-van overnight.

Any ideas will be very helpful!! You only get people's cash once

olly300

The main problem you got is this is the time when there is lots of frost so most things you plant outside will not survive. However this is the ideal time to plant trees, shrubs and rose bushes. You can also plant containers of pansies, ivy and other winter plants.

To stop people parking you need to make the containers hard to displace. and to place the shrubs/trees in awarkard places.

BTW Even with the flowers there people will try and park unless you have shrubs/trees and containers that may damage their vehicle to block them.

Karmacat

There isn't a lot of light on the patch, so you need shade resistant plants too - ferns, um, I think anything with grey leaves?

Fulham_Mark

Thanks.

I've been given loads of bulbs and I have a few plants that look like the small hedge plants.

Trees are a good idea. Since the message and this site going down I've managed to get quite a few large rocks that seem to have stopped a lot of cars driving over it.

Ivy is a good idea too.

Are any of these shadey winter plants?
berberis
cotoneaster
laurel
euphorbia
helebores
low companula
auburetia
alyssum
arabis

sorry for my spelling - I was given a hand-written list by an old lady

olly300

Google is your friend! Done some of it for you.

Are any of these shadey winter plants?
berberis - sun or light shade
cotoneaster- sun, light shade and full shade, according to amateur gardener mag you can plant it now, its a shrub
laurel - shade, it's an evergreen shrub and can get big
euphorbia - shade
hellebores - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/main.jhtml?xml=/gardening/2005/02/03/gdown05.xml
low companula - sun or part shade
auburetia - sun or shade
alyssum - sun or partial shade
arabis - sun , light shade and full shade



Oh and more plants to add to your list:
http://netgardeners.co.uk/plantsinfo/plants1.html

Fulham_Mark

thanks!!

I've done quite a bit of searching but there's a lot of jargon and stuff out there that I don't understand or I read something that turns out to be american and I have no idea what climate they have.

It would be great if it was easy to load photos on to here then I could show you the patch of land and conditions.

It's lovely to come out of building in central london and see a lot of trees, just need to get the ground to be plants instead of rock-hard mud

will try to plant some of these this week in all rain we're getting