Planning a garden - no idea! Please help

[Waspie]

I have a landscaper coming on Monday to look at sorting out the far end of the back garden.

At the moment it's just gravel and weeds, no grass or beds or anything. It's bordered on two sides by a field which is currently just growing grass and weeds. I would like to return the space to a lawn with borders or beds.

It's about 15 metres square and needs to be low maintenance. We don't need a seating area in this part of the garden although I would like space for a bench.

It's fully south facing and very open to the elements (due to the field) although we do have one wonderful old oak tree at the far end which gives a good amount of shade.

I'm in two minds - should I just ask the landscaper to get rid or the gravel and turf it all? I can then worry about the flowers and beds later when I've been able to see how the grass gets on. Or shall I bit the bullet and get them to do a full plan with planting?

I guess cost will play a part too. I don't want to spend more than £10k and i know money doesn't go far for landscaping these days!

Any advice would be gratefully received.
TIA

No advice for whether you do flower beds or not at the moment, but when you do decide to plant flowers have a good nosy over your neighbours gardens. This will give you a good idea of what grows well in your area. I have certain plants that thrive and others that I just can’t get to grow in our soil.

Good luck with your garden! Mine gives me an enormous amount of pleasure.

Thanks LeNil. I would like this space to give me pleasure too. At the moment it's more "1970's council car park" than garden.

I should probably add that we didn't make it this way - it was used by the previous owners for parking their work vans.

I think that you need to think about the design a bit more. Forget about planting for the moment.
You have "the far end" with a "wonderful old oak tree" against a backdrop of fields. I think you should be thinking about focal points and vistas; paths and features (including the bench); how it sits in the landscape. You should probably be getting some height in there.

Is your landscaper an ideas person or just muscle that you have to direct?

I go around in circles with the design really senua. Fundamentally I'm scared of doing it wrong and making a complete mess of it. This is why I've come up with this half way solution of turfing the whole area as a first step.

I contacted about 6 landscapers and this company is the only one who replied. I guess I'll find out on Monday if he has ideas or not!

Here's a photo from last autumn. Since then we've taken out all of the enormous shrubs in front of the fence (this was to fix the fence) so that side is just bare fence currently.

I would quite like a summer house, a pond and a vegetable patch but the house is listed so the summer house would require LB consent and the dog would probably use the pond as a bath and dig up the veges!

Would a shepherd's hut (mobile) be allowed?

That's a huge apace. I'm not surprised that you want to low-maintenance it. Could you leave it as a wildflower meadow, or is that what the fields are?

Are you going to get a quotation for both seeding and turfing?

I will take a look at shepherd's huts, thanks for the idea senua.

The field is used for grazing sheep from September to March after which the grass is left to grow and is cut and bailed in late summer. The field belongs to the farm next door. The grass grows to waist height in the summer and sheds a lot of weed seeds around the area. I think keeping control of weeds encroaching from the field is going to be one of the biggest challenges.

I was looking through some online gardening websites yesterday evening and I'm thinking of asking for a mix of meadow (as you suggest) with some small trees (perhaps ornamental fruit trees?) dotted around and a round-ish area of grass under the oak for my large seating "pod" (that's about 3m wide x 2.5m deep x 2 m high, but we can have it because it's not a permanent structure). I also need to ask whether a water pipe and tap could be put in somewhere at that end of the garden and then I could have a small fountain or water feature.

I'd also like to put something along the fence. I'll think more about this.

I'm going to try and find a decent garden design app this weekend and work up some suggestions. Thanks for your help and ideas

If anyone has any suggestions for small-ish fruit trees which like full sun. Our soil is pretty good - it's loamy and quite quick draining although it can get water logged in the winter.

Also if anyone knows of any good garden design apps I'd be grateful, thanks

Our garden borders fields and I am interested to see what is suggested as my borders constantly want to be fields, so grass springs up daily!! We planted apple trees on one edge and they have done well over all.

Pretty much all fruit trees like a lot of sun

To keep them small you can buy them on dwarfing rootstocks. Dont go too dwarfing though as the really small ones dont compete well with grass etc and tend to be better in pots.

We have an area down the bottom of the garden with about ten dwarf fruit trees scattered around (apple (x2), pear (x2), cherry (x2), plum (x2), quince, medlar) then long grass/wildflowers around them (also hens but they are less ornamental 😀)

Also if anyone knows of any good garden design apps I'd be grateful, thanks
I don't do Apps if I can help it. How about going more old skool than that: think back to Capability Brown and how he tried to incorporate his designs into nature (or was that 'nature into his designs').
Couple of articles here and here.

PS. If your neighbours are grazing sheep, do think about the toxicity of whatever you plant near the boundary.

Your garden sounds similar to what I'm thinking of trying to achieve jaffacakesreepic. Well except the hens, I'm not sure the dog would get on with them! Thanks, the trees don't need to be tiny, just maybe topping out at 3m rather than 10m

Google says that sheep love fruit and can do serious damage to the trees. It also says apple pips are poisonous. The fence on that side is only low and I don't want sheep jumping the fence to get to the fruit trees or poisoning themselves with apple pips. There is a large hazelnut tree in the field which the sheep love, so I'll look at nut trees for that side of the garden and keep the fruit trees to the other side.

Sheep make very good lawnmowers and lovely quiet neighbours.

The more I think about it the more I like the idea of an edible garden - fruit trees, some raspberry canes, runner beans and a blackberry bush perhaps. We have a potted fig tree growing against a SW facing wall which is getting too large for the space which I could move down there too. I realise they like walls but hopefully a south facing fence will be okay.

Thanks for the article links senua, I will read these after work.

The bigger risk with the sheep is that they will start to eat the bark off the trees if they can reach it which could kill the trees

Personally I would be inclined to plant an edible hedge along the fence (things like hawthorn, wild rose, rowan, elder, sea buckthorn, blackberries etc, things that will be okay for the sheep to eat the leaves off, will provide lots of support for nature and you get the bonus of some berries off if you want it and if not the wildlife benefits. If you check the heights you can probably keep the hedge quite low (maybe not elder it grows so quickly!!)

Then it might be worth looking into forest gardening. This is a way of mimicing nature with your planting. So you get your upper storey (nut trees) your understory (fruit trees then fruit bushes) then the underplanting which can be veg and herbs and ground fruit or it can be flowers or a mix. You don't have to have all the levels, I skipped the nut tree level because I don't have the space.

So fruit trees with fruit bushes underneath and then I have underplanted with robust herbs etc which are good for the hens and can take the pecking they get. But you could have fruit trees, some bushes and then underplant with various bulbs so you get a succession of flowers for example.

Also if you are interested in edible gardening its worth looking at some of the more unusual things, for example magnolia petals are edible and the trees are beautiful. Also you can grow various types of pepper corns in this country etc.

With the fig tree keeping the roots contained is the important bit (as you probably know) so it fruits better, so if you are moving it from the pot to the ground don't forget a root bag for it.

I use keepers nursery for all my fruit trees, I've probably bought about 30 off them over the years and I've always been pleased with them, they are very knowledgeable about the right sort of rootstock and they have a wide range.

The other thing to consider is maybe a polytunnel? Because its not permanent like a greenhouse you should get away with it and that would give you the option for things like tomatoes, winter veg, and less hardy fruit like peaches, nectarines, passion fruit, grapes etc. They aren't as pretty if you are wanting something more visually appealing though but they do extend the growing season, give you somewhere dry to sit out in winter, and a useful place to dry clothes on a rainy day!

Hi there- I know this is off piste but saw your pic and thought gravel garden- check out Beth Chatto type planting (which is low maintenance snd great for hot south facing garden) which then goes into your beautiful orchard? www.bethchatto.co.uk/garden-nursery/gallery/gravel-garden.htm#
Whatever I would digest your designer does a staged plan so you can build up Shen you have time and no hard work is wasted.