Near the House – Balancing the View

For several years the rockery on the right hand side in front of the house remained unchanged. It made more practical sense here, because, although it was high maintenance, it supported the border in the higher section of the garden to the west of the house.

We had successfully disguised it for a considerable time by planting a border of perennials in front. These were planted directly into the gravel and looked spectacular in the summer, especially with the evening light shining through. The plants all loved the gravelly soil and spread prolifically, seeding further and further outwards, increasing the area until access to the top garden steps were pretty much blocked. There was hardly a gap to walk through. A beautiful border, but far too big.

It took two serious attempts to move all the plants we wanted to save. This seemed like a turning point in the development of the garden. We had spent years propagating, splitting, and scrounging plants, now suddenly we had too many. Bags, barrow loads and boxes of plants were dug up in late February and moved to a new perennial area next to the pond. By the end of March the same quantity had sprung up again, so five huge containers and a cubic metre gravel bag of healthy plants were moved to the ever expanding perennial border by the pond.

We decided against digging out all of the rockery stones, and instead found some long, wide planks we’d saved from the old garage when it fell down. We constructed a framework to create two raised borders to match the railway sleeper border on the opposite side and to completely hide the rockery. The framework was really strong when it was put in place, and we found a good source of dryish soil under the big conifers, not too far away, for transporting. The soil filled the new area up to the level of the original border behind, creating a new more planned structure and hiding the rockery. It was a massive improvement and made the whole area in front of the house seem more considered and deliberate. I had a couple of Pittosporum shrubs with pale cream leaf edges, which I put in, as they will look good next to the established Berberis.

We found these four perfect metal fence panels half buried underneath a pile of overgrown soil, down by the entrance gate. We cleaned them up and a friend welded them together into a pair of right angles. We gave them a couple of coats of Hammerite and they were as good as new and set off the entrance to the meadow garden and pond perfectly.

Transformation jobs are always satisfying; this one particularly so.