What can we do with this garden? (Photo included, I hope!)

[LemonRedwood]

We moved in 1 month ago. I feel like we have the house under control. I know what I'm doing when it comes to inside spaces!

Neither I nor DH have ever had a garden, apart from when we were growing up. I also manage to kill houseplants in a shockingly short space of time.

Long-term plan involves a bit of landscaping but no money for that at the moment. We would like the garden to look a little nicer than it does at the moment though. I'm not sure if the plants that are already there are dead or or not. There seem to be a few roses and I guess those just aren't flowering at this time of year??

I'd like to fill out the beds that are running down the sides of the lawn so that there's more foliage than mud on view but have no idea what would work well planted closely together or not. No idea what type of soil it is - quite a dark brown but a fair few stones visible.

Aspect is north west. Left hand bed gets sunshine during the day from about halfway up, but the rest is in shade.

That ended up quite long. Sorry.

I do like curves in garden design, but you need to be very careful about what you do with the space when they meet straight lines, such as the house and the boundary, as you can end up with funny little triangles that are too small to plant up and look weird . Some times you can fix this with overlapping circles .

In our garden we have both . Straight lines next to the house - raised beds, gravel sitting area, grass, pond and beds.

Then we have curvy bits and a circular patio at the back near the wall. We had to do this as the plot is a very irregular shape , and if we put features in line with the house, they looked very odd where they meet the back wall.

See you makes a good point - grass can often be a prefect nuisance in a small garden . Unless you need it for small children to play on .

kristina brilliant examples
are there any more where they came from?

Thousands . They are all from Pinterest . I ❤️ Pinterest . Did I mention that ?

Just search for " small garden design " . Try " back yard design " too as lots of pinners use US English .

I discovered that when I was searching for " grey jumper " and realised I should have used " gray sweater " as well < completely irrelevant information >

There may not be many plants in the garden due to the north west aspect, you will need to plant shrubs that are happy to grow in the shade.

You should also consider that if you plant things in a row your beds could end up looking quite blobby

Shrubs that are fine without a lot of sun are holly, laurels, fox gloves, autumn glory, lavender, rosemary - all being self sufficient and coming back year after year.

Ivy - IME lavender needs sun . But I agree that plants need to go in groups or it will be blobby

I have a northish facing front garden and put a row of lavendar in a bed and it did rather to well, along with some rosemary, I would suggest it at the front of a bed two or three together would give excellent smell and presence in front of some rosemary.

I think this is a question of 'what kind of shade'?

Lavender likes sun. It will, however, tolerate dryish shade in a light area of the country. Most varieties do not like the wet, though. Put it in a bog garden or soil that is waterlogged for a large amount of the year and it will probably die.

I agree ivykate, it's a lovely plant and I'm glad it does well for you .

I know it's been three years since I started this thread but I thought I'd come back and show you what we eventually did with the garden.

Everything is just starting to flower now and I'm so pleased that my citrus trees in the big pots on the patio in the corner didn't die over the winter. Just leaves so far though, no fruit yet. And my rose which I planted about a year after moving in is now about 3 feet tall and has about 30 buds just starting to open! (it's kind of hidden on the left hand side of the photo).

It was definitely a good idea to have some curves rather that just straight lines. Love my garden now

Very nice. I like the brick edging. Finishes off the lawn very well an most be easy to mow over so no fussing around with edging tools.

Yes, I push the flymo right over into the beds to get the edges done. DH still faffs around with the edging tools though as he doesn't feel he's done it properly otherwise 😂