Garden makeover <hopeful>

[UrsulaUndress]

Could anyone help with ideas?

I have a widish front garden which I suppose you could classify as Mature Untended. It's not a complete mess but almost - it has some fairly baldy grass (football pitch), a gravel drive on one side, and two quite deep border beds at the front and side - by deep I mean they are about 5 foot from front to back, that seems deep to me. There are trees at the back of the beds, nothing special just sycamores and elder and something else. I am looking for 2 main bits of help:

1. something that I could plant (now?) that would give a good blast of colour, I need a biggish block of colour as the beds are very dreary with just some crummy old bits of holly and laurel (?) bushes, nothing you would plant from choice, and they are constantly covered in mucky leaves which have fallen from overhead and been let go mulchy. I have planted daffodils which do look nice when they come up but that's about it.

1. I am looking for an idea for a row of something (hedging? bushes?) that I could plant (in pots?) in front of a wide, low window. It's our office window and while our road is not very busy it does look right out the front gate and I'd like to put some sort of shieldy thing in front of it. It's about 6 foot wide and on the ground in front of it is a weird sort of swathe of concrete so I thought I could put the planting shield at the edge of the concrete and then between the row of pots etc and the front wall / window I could hide the cat's bowl / toddler trikes etc. It sounds disgusting when I describe it but it's not that bad.

Sorry to have gone on at length, I would REALLY appreciate any ideas.

I'd chop the sycamore down (providing it is yours and there are no TPOs on it). The bigger it gets the more it will kill off what you have growing underneath. Sycamores are non native species in the UK (so don't feel too bad!). They also have a bad habit off killing under planting (leaf fall and blocking out the light etc) and you will be eventually left with bare earth.
For the 2nd point - have you thought of lavender. It will make a low hedge that grows happily in pots, although from what you describe I'd probably make some wooden trough / planter type thing (cut down on the amount of indiviual pots needed). You get some fabulous varieties of lavender - silvery foliage / green foliage/ small flowers / big butterfly type flowers. Nice fragance come some and even in winter won't be completely bare.
HTH

Thank you greenapples. A good gardeny name.

I think lavender would be beautiful, I like the type which is not thistley-shaped at the top, the type which is just a sort of plain narrow head like wheat or something. The planter is problematic, it's such a long space to fill, so a row of pots is a bit bitty.

We have a big sycamore at the back and not even grass will grow under it, but it's partly on our land and partly on a neighbour's . I am actually in Ireland - I don't know if they are native trees to us or not, but I know they do grow like weeds around the country. I feel so lucky to have trees that I am very slow to do any chopping but we had to cut them all back hard last year for reasons of light and poking off roof tiles.

Sycamore is native to Germany / Italy etc but not the UK od Ireland - was introduced about 17th / 18th Centuary. If you wanted to plant a native tree for your area I'd go for one of the native cherries, Common/Wild Cherry (Prunus avium) and Bird Cherry (Prunus padus). Pretty blossom and wildlife friendly too!

That's UK or / and Ireland ... DH started talking to me. :)

It's ok I know you think we are odd over here

Sorting out the lawn will make it look much nicer. Sounds like it could do with a good weedkiller/food and re-seeding.