My new garden!

[SherlockNewHomes]

Ive finally bought a new house after 7yrs of scrimping. I'm road testing a new user name as I hope to get lots of help creating my new garden and posting photos will be outing under an old user name.

I will be removing two huge leylandii hedges and creating a garden from scratch really and so if you'll have me, I'd love you guys to help me plan it over the coming weeks if you'll have me.

The hedges make the garden extremely private but on the neighbours sides they are looking at brown/bare branches and so I definately want to remove them all.

The garden faces south westerly, and Im in the midlands. I cant really tell what my soil is like at the moment as the hedges are taking all the goodness. On the left are some fab mature trees/shrubs/hedging which in time I'd hope to create more of along the borders. Im not sure how many pictures mn will allow me to post at once so here goes...

I meant the right hand side has mature trees. Can anyone help me to identify two? Of five trees; two are apple, one a flowering cherry. Another, the pink bud picture is multistemed like a very tall shrub, weigela maybe? And the last I haven't the foggiest.

Can anyone help me identify them?

View of the whole garden, trees to the right, hedging and my washing!

Lovely but that fruit tree needs a hard prune!

Now isn't the time to prune a fruit tree though!

A lovely open garden with lots of scope, a lot to enjoy.
Although there seems to be few flower beds, it's often a good idea to wait a season or two, to see what pops up.

There's two apple trees. They probably look like one from that distance. Am i meant to have lopped all those spindly hair type branches/twigs off it. Im an okayish gardener but havent had a garden of sorts for a long long time. I'll deffo need advice on pruning the trees. And what to plant in the beds once the leylandii comes out.

I know i'll need to condition the soil etc once the trees come out but I'll need to put tall things back in again to screen off the houses behind.

There are no flower beds at all other than the one island bed. In there are sedum, a peony, a euphorbia and a white thing Im not sure of, hostas, a half dead hebe and i suspect a choisya.

The only other "flowers" are something which has gone rampant under the far hedge so I will be able to plan all the beds from scratch. At the front is an equally huge lawn surrounded by a hedge of ceanothus, hawthorn and other unknown entities.

Pruning, if neglected, needs to be done gradually. Usually if you hack fruit trees back too hard, they aren't very happy.

Rule of thumb for apples is 1/3 of branches by 1/3, in winter.

There is argument for doing plum or cherry in summer as they're susceptible to disease.

I'm still working on the plum in our garden, we've had the house five years now!

Agree with JT about seeing what appears though, especially at the time of year we are now.

I have a garden that was established, but then sadly neglected due to ill health. We lived with it for a year or two, while working on pervasive weeds (I have ground elder, nettles, bindweed and horsetail) and starting to prune the fruit trees.

THen we had building works done which trashed the (rubbish) lawn and 'drive' so had those done, plus some beds built. That was 2 years ago.

It's now just starting to be how I want- with some fairly cottage garden style borders, fruit and veg etc. But a lot of gaps still.

Ongoing project/ lifelong piece of work

Perhaps for the time being, measure, draw a plan and decide what you want each area of the garden to be. Then you could look at any landscaping you might need, such as children's play area. Then according to aspect, soil etc. Make a planting plan that you can implement over time.
Lots of ideas on Pinterest.

These are a few from last year, haven't currently located anything from this year or the 'befores'

I find pruning fruit trees a real pleasure. I got The Rhs book of Pruning fit about £3 on Amazon, and learned from that.
Of you want your garden to have different rooms or sections, you could do espalierd trees between. It looks lovely, and it's about an hours work a year, maximum.

Wow thankyou for the photos. Your borders in front of your hedge made me wobble there for a moment thinking can I keep these conifers. But they really are monsters. They are at least 8ft deep and im trying to tell myself that 8ft deep beds will give me much more interest and variety than keeping these beasts. We've only lived here a week and we've already chopped two down in the front as we couldnt open our car doors. We'll eventually have an extension on the side of the house so the dining room will open out into the middle of the garden which gets the most sun. The shady area will always be the area under those trees which I assume precludes something like an arbour under there. We've had an aviary in the past and I'd love one again. Because the garden is wide and shallow I feel a bit lost. The temptation is to just have borders around the perimeters but I suspect that will just add to the shallow depth perception of the garden.

Is espalierd the same as pleached? I think that may be beyond my skill set but I do like the idea of zoning the garden.

The trees are bare behind my initial green bit so I can stick my head through to see no besting birds etc. This is the view the back neighbour has. The side neighbour has the same except he has grown clematis up it to disguise it. Both sides are thrilled that Im considering taking them out and I can see why from their vantage point!

Espalier not as tall as pleached and not 'square'

Don't wobble on the leylandii, they're awful things.

Our hedge is nearly all hawthorn and while it's great in summer with birds/ privacy, it needs cutting back twice a year, which DH does, and I then spend months skewering myself on thorns. I'd love a more mixed hedge but this is well established and we're by a busy road so we deal with it.

And yes, oh dear re the back of the 'hedge'

But, there is fencing there.

If DH is concerned about privacy, suggest mounting trellis then lots of climbers- jasmine, honeysuckle, clematis

Oooh trellis thats a good idea.

I was considering maybe a silver birch/acer and another cherry to add new dappled height, robinia/buddleia/hydrangea etc for bulk and climbers like honeysuckle/clematis etc to cover the actual fence.

Would that work?

Will have to go look up Robinia as it's not one I know. Ooooh, pretty.

Neither Buddleia or hydrangea are evergreen, you might want to try something else in there that is, or it will be a bit sparse in winter. Or something that has winter interest like Cotinus (I think that's the one with the coloured twigs?), or twisted hazel for shape or witch hazel or forsythia as they provide very early flowers.

Bear in mind though that any trees are either spend a serious fortune or wait many many years for the height.

We bought a 7 foot acer last year, over £100 (and that was probably really really good value- there were specimen trees at that nursery for over 1k!). Of course, we then discovered the place we wanted to put it had about 8 inches max depth of soil due to various structures around there but hey....

Live in it for a year before making decisions.

I'm happy to leave everything else for a year Ava but these hedges really are dominanting the garden and are awful on the neighbours side. The bare branches picture further up is on the neighbour that has the 6ft fence. On the side he has a 4ft fence so thats all he is looking at. I think it might be a quick win in neighbour relations to get them out. I'd also get a head start on growing stuff. If I had anything else there at all I'd leave it completely.

Have you actually spoken to the neighbours about the leylandii?

The leylandii are out!!! 25 stumps are booked to be removed and ground out. The light is amazing flooding into the garden, each hedge was about 8ft deep so I now have MASSIVE beds ready to fill once Ive conditioned the soil.

The neighbours are all thrilled and we've booked to have new fences on all sides so they all get nice fencing after 30odd years. I also got a fantastic deal on some nicer trees from a local wholesale nursery. They gave me a cherry, a whitebeam, two rowan, and a crabapple for 20.00 each and all are 6ft trees so I'll be able to have much more dappled screening and interest.

Im massively excited about being able to plant up the huge beds over the coming years. The remaining side is like a woodland style hedgerow with the two apple trees. I wont be touching that at all.

Removing the leylandii, there was nothing else there except wobbly broken fences and hideous dry sticks where the trees had been cut so far back to the dead wood. Im so glad I took them out. The potential in the garden is now massive and I'm a little bit in love with my new trees. They feel special because they are MINE that I have chosen and am ready to nurture in my own garden. And it'd special to know exactly what they are and where Im going to site them rather than inheriting a garden from someone else.

And just to reassure everyone there were no nesting birds.

Wonderful! Au revoir leylandii