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Ideas for Sprucing up a Patch of Garden
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Do you use it for anything? Use the bench? Which way does the sun hit it?
Initial thought is to cut the grass and prune the hedges back a bit to just make it tidier. Maybe if the sun gives the bench a nice blast of sunlight you could put pots with annuals either side to jolly it up?
I suspect the ground just under the hedges don't get much sunlight and the soil might be acidic due to needles dropping (hence a lack of grass). So you might look for plants that like shade and acidic soil. Maybe something seen here.....Find advice & tips on garden & indoor plants | Plant finder & selector / RHS GardeningI’m a Forum Ambassador and I support the Forum Team on Debt Free Wannabe, Old Style Money Saving and Pensions boards. If you need any help on these boards, do let me know. Please note that Ambassadors are not moderators. Any posts you spot in breach of the Forum Rules should be reported via the report button, or by emailing forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com. All views are my own and not the official line of MoneySavingExpert.
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Can't find the photo I wanted. One lady got a plinth and greenman face from charity shops and made a waterfall from the face into a trough.She planted shrubs around it so it was a treasure to find.Easier is moving the bench forward a bit and square block paving (can get cheaply when a builders merchant is getting rid of small quantities) and make a semi circular stand for it.I'd use compost and membrane over and plant tough bushes like golden and cream Euonymous and trim into shapes planted through the membrane then cover with pea shingle leaving a few slabs as a path down the middle. A couple of large pots with something bright like the Silver Charm wallflower that blooms all year.you could find a cheap arch or some trellis behind to bring the fence to the fore and paint the bench.
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What type of gardens do you like? How do you want to feel when you're sitting there? Will you be sitting there or not? Do you want it to be a private space? Or room for more people? What direction does it face, what's your soil like? If it's rubbish, will you be suing pots? Answer some of those and you'll have more of an idea where you want to end up with it..
Non me fac calcitrare tuum culi3 -
How about a willow arch over the bench with clematis trailing through it?2
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Something like this with sleepers and decking ?..... easy to create and not costing
a fortune.
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I was thinking something similar...
Looking at it, the issues for me are the seat cutting across the space and the 'walls' being (visually) a solid block of colour.
I like the idea of delimiting the space with stones or gravel. I'd either get a corner seating arrangement or at the least move the bench to one side (whichever gets most sun) and balance the other side with a chair/table/planter.
I'm not sure about your budget, but I'd be seriously considering something like this (and if you don't want to spend that much/want to keep the bench, then two just two trellis panels would have a similar effect) then getting some solar lights at above head height and/or climbing flowering plants to break the area up and make it more defined/interesting to the eye
I'm not an early bird or a night owl; I’m some form of permanently exhausted pigeon.2 -
It's quite a small patch, here are some more angles.
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This looks incredibly stony. If you took a garden fork and worked your way across the lawn, pushing the tines into the ground at say 10cm intervals, is there anywhere you can get the fork 10cms into the ground? Then rotate 90 degree and do the same assessment?
If not, what you've got is essentially a slightly buried gravel garden. Can be planted, can be luxurious but you need the right plants.
And if you sit in the bench looking at the camera point, at what time of the day is the sun behind the camera?
I assume that hedge is mainly privet? Can you cut it back hard, even now, almost into the old growth?If you've have not made a mistake, you've made nothing1 -
I would be tempted to take all of the grass up and replace it with a nice gravelI am a Senior Forum Ambassador and I support the Forum Team on the Wales, Small Biz MoneySaving, In My Home (includes DIY) MoneySaving, and Old style MoneySaving boards. Please note that Ambassadors are not moderators. Any posts you spot in breach of the Forum Rules should be reported via the report button, or by emailing forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com.All views are my own and not the official line of MoneySavingExpert.3
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newbieni said:It's quite a small patch, here are some more angles.
Pinterest has lots of ideas if you search for 'small corner garden layout' but, off the top of my head, if you don't like the pagoda idea, how would you feel about replacing the bench with one of those metal round table and two chair sets which would take up only a little more space than the bench? I've seen them at car boots a few times recently and most of the time they just need a coat of metal paint to bring them back to looking tidy.
But really (as others have said) it depends on what you want to use that corner for and how the rest of your garden looks - do you want to sit in it or would a few pots with perhaps a tall shrub at the back be enough to break the space up?I'm not an early bird or a night owl; I’m some form of permanently exhausted pigeon.1
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