I'm poorly at the moment, so occupying myself with designing the front garden. My house is a squat toad of a bungalow, it has a decent size front garden, with a small in and out driveway that is tarmac (ie a semi circular drive in front of the house), and a garage to the side. There is a small low wall between us and the road, which is very busy during rush hour but reasonably quiet the rest of the time. The car and the front windows get quite dirty in the winter which I think is dirt and spray from the road , as the side of the car that faces the road when it's parked is always much dirtier than the other side. But the view is gorgeous as we live in a very picturesque location so I do not want to put a big fence up.
The land slopes from the road down to the house. The front door is in the middle of the house and there is a path with basic yellow concrete slabs from the middle of the drive down to the door, with 2 steps down. Then you step up once again to step inside the house. Oddly, the path isn't actually centred on the door, it's slightly off, which I find mildly annoying.
The previous occupiers have left us with roses and dahlias, a lovely small amalenchier and a lot of minature mahonias, all of which are on the far side of the drive between us and the road. There's also a self seeded laurel and a judas tree, both quite small at the moment there. But they are right by the amalenchier so might have to come out anyway. On the other side of the driveway, in front of the house, its all lawn with little borders which pop up with tulips, grape hyacinths and bluebells, then a few smaller dahlias later in the summer. Either side, between us and the neighbours, are fences and borders filled with things like fire thorns, holly, possibly weigelia, a big mahonia, escalonia and what I think is a shrub honeysuckle that's massive. and aside from trying to bring these down in size I don't plan to change these side borders at all.
We're in our 50s now and likely to be here for a very long time, plus DH has incurable cancer so I'm thinking about accessibility too, as he's likely to get much more poorly in future, though hopefully not for a few years yet. I've a few ideas as a starting point:
- sort out the step down then step up again to the front door by raising that bit, centre the path and change the paving to something nicer. I'll need to keep one step because of the gradient or the path will be steep.
- add an additional flat path with no steps as an option incase there are wheelchairs in our future. I'm thinking of taking this path from the centre path, off to the side toward the garage which would mean the gradient wouldn't be an issue
- replace all the grass with beds so I won't need to do any mowing out front
- some planting needs to get to at least waist height which will hide the majority of the brickwork and make the house look substantially prettier I think. Preferably evergreen.
- make a fedge behind the low wall (ie house side) and grow evergreen climbers, keep this low enough for us to still appreciate the view from the house, but high enough to give us a bit more protection from the road
I won't have a lot of money to get this done so it's probably going to be a piecemeal project over a couple of years. I'll get builders in to do the paths but will do everything else myself. The front is south facing and we're on clay here. I'm in the UK, East Midlands. I have very little experience, previous gardens have always been pretty small and relatively low maintenance, and I've never stayed anywhere for long enough to be dealing with any mature plants, so the garden I have now is a different kettle of fish for me.
We used a lovely indian sandstone on the patio at the back and I was thinking of using that for the front paths, but in my heart I would love a rustic brick path but unsure if I'd be able to afford it. Does anyone have a brick path? What's it like in the winter? Does it get very slippery? What do you think of making paths out of different materials, can that ever look good? Am thinking that if the bricks do turn out to be too expensive then I could do part of the path as brick, maybe a patch just in front of the door, then the rest in the sandstone perhaps.
Fedge experience anyone? How did you do it and what did you plant? I was thinking of getting some rebar and hammering it into the ground at intervals as the uprights, then attaching chicken wire to the rebar with twist of wire. I was thinking of growing 2 types of evergreens maybe clematis and honeysuckle, one that is winter flowering and one summer flowering. Never done a fedge before, or grown climbers, so no idea if this is practical. Base of the plants would be in shade because of the low wall.
I'd also love suggestions for the rest of the planting please. I'd love the garden to look just as great in winter as it would in the summer. I prefer an informal style garden with lots of colour, don't mind doing a bit of pottering about and pruning annually but don't want things that will go mad and take over everything else if I don't keep on top of them. Wildlife/bird friendly would be super. What have you planted that you've absolutely loved, and what would you avoid? How do you decide what to plant where and make it look good? TIA.