What trees and plants would you have if your garden was huge?

[DaphneFlower]

Can be as big as you like. I'll go with a cedar. Love those. Plus a sequoia. Lilacs and daphne. My garden is small so much as I love lilacs it's not really worth it for the length of time they bloom.

Definitely a couple of fig trees!! Put them in a sunny corner and they do fantastically- you'll get a bumper crop every year and they are so delicious plucked from the tree every day! They need nothing..

I have a very large garden (an acre) and one of the selling points of the house was that it has large mature trees. We have a weeping willow and magnolia together with a hammock between them which has huge swathes of naturalised daffodils underneath. My favourite place to be in spring.
We also have a big walnut tree with a couple of swings which my kids have now outgrown sadly.
we also have several fruit trees and I try and plant a new one each year, going to plant another pear this year.
we are very very lucky!

A glade of flowering cherries, another of acers and a small wood of birch with wildflowers underneath and a path meandering through. Love the idea of a walled orchard, and a stream. A proper old fashioned flower meadow is lovely, and a beech wood (you did say big!). Also a large secure area where the guineapigs can rome about, with lots of grass and other safe plants to browse on and really stretch their legs.

I have all those except for the swing and the weeping willows (they are unlikely to thrive in the same gardens as meconopsis and I'd rather have the meconopsis.) Tell you what, though: it's bloody hard work....

I’d have a big conker tree, lots of magnolias, and lilacs of every colour. Then I’d have my fences covered in sweet peas every summer.

@Bideshi I'm happy for you (except for the hardwork), I think my fantasy garden must be somewhere at the junction of the white and the dark peaks. With a dash of Cheshire clay.

We have a very big garden. Have enjoyed planting weeping willows and contorted willows. Also have a fruit orchard. My mum chose every tree in there for us, including plums, greengages, apple, pear and cherry. Now she's died it reminds me of her and the fun she had deciding the trees we should have

I’d love a field planted with wildflowers, it would have a large conker tree in the middle with a bench around it’s trunk, and the field would have lilacs and magnolia around the edge.

We have 7 acres which is mostly wild !!
We have planted oak, birch and ash trees.
This year my plan is to cultivate 1 acre with native flowers and weeds.

That was my first thought too. I got all excited recently by finding mini ‘mulberry bushes’ for sale online and then I found a page of reviews saying the fruit was tasteless compared to proper mulberry trees.

Also a magnolia, fruit trees and lots of winter scented plants. In fact scented plants for every season!

@DaphneFlower sorry for the fail link but the house and garden that apparently inspired the book was up for sale in 2014 www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2644779/Country-house-inspired-Philippa-Pearces-Toms-Midnight-Garden-goes-market-3-5million.html

Wow, how lovely. I wonder if the people who live there now were fans of the book.

@DaphneFlower on further research it appears to be owned by Cambridge garden trusts, so maybe they are
www.parksandgardens.org/places/kings-mill-house-great-shelford

I have six acres of which about 4 is quite formally gardened. I forgot about mulberry trees. I need to get one immediately. Now! Today!

I would get lots of fruits trees.

BlackBerry bushes.

Anything I could grow food on really.

Tree with lovely blossoms,.so I could have picnics with all the soft petals falling down around me.

I think I might just be tempted to plant a wellingtonia.

Many acers. Definitely a cedar, probably cedrus deodara, a gingko or two, a red oak, and a nice native woodland area. I might like an orchard as well.

How big a garden are we talking - big enough for a tree-lined drive through the deer park up to the house? I'd love to be able to plant an avenue of trees.

Oh I love gingkos @pinneddownbytabbies
Also love cats

Yes to the walled orchard, the stream and the wildflower meadow!

A copper beech, a yew tree, and some chestnut trees (if in the UK) or at least 3 river red gums and also yes to the Wollemi pine (if at home in Aust). I’ve been having a lot of trouble resisting the urge to put a Wollemi pine in my too-small garden, because they are so amazing.

And a quince and a medlar. Even if you don’t eat the fruits, they have big white flowers followed by golden fruits

Yes, I have 'Vranja' but it doesn't do well here. A medlar definitely - thank you for the prompt. I do have old trees - oaks and so on- because we are in the middle of ancient woodland. But I have planted lots of magnolias - including M. campbelii - the great tree magnolia of the Himalaya, ginkgos (2), davidias (2) swamp cypress, Wellingtonia, dawn redwood and nothofagus. I am too old to see these trees come to anything like maturity but I will carry on planting nonetheless.

I'd love a big magnolia tree.

I foraged acorns on the day of the Queen's death and the day of her funeral. About 5 have germinated, so I think I'd have a pair of them. Plus an orchard with apple, pear, crab apple and nut trees - some at perfect hammock spacing. With daffodils for spring and wild flowers in summer. Lime trees (love the heady smell)

I'd make the boundary along one side a copper beech hedge, and try to have a properly laid native species hedge somewhere. Lilacs and a pom pom bush. Peonies and roses. A herb garden. An asparagus bed.

A croquet lawn.

A brick-paved terrace with a chamomile seat. Some sort of den or treehouse.

I grew up in a house with an acre of garden that had nearly all of those!

Yes, I have 'Vranja' but it doesn't do well here I read somewhere that although they’re self fertile they do better with a pollination partner. Mine is on clay, in Yorkshire, at 400 ft. Not a heavy fruiter but now it’s a decent size I’m getting at least 40 fruits, maybe more, I didn’t count or weigh them. But we haven’t quite finished last year’s quince paste or jam,and my deepfreeze is full of flesh and juice waiting for enough jam jars to become free.

I too have a swamp cypress which I grew from seed. It seemed a rational choice for the waterlogged conditions at the end of the garden.