Help Needed: Upgrading the front garden

[Nazz00]

Hi - I'm working on improving my rather dull front garden and would love some recommendations.

It is a rather small space, but it gets full sun exposure as it faces south. I'd like to include some rose bushes and peony as I've seen these on our street. What varieties of roses and peonies would work well? Any tips on planting, care, etc.? As a complete beginner, I also don't know where to start in terms of sourcing the plants. So, any recommendations for good nurseries or garden centres in the North London area would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Hello Nazz00,

I would start by looking through your local library catalog online for garden design books to give you some ideas 🤔
I have these on a book shelf one of them The Complete Planting Design Course was jointly written by Hilary Thomas was a garden design tutor at Capel Manor which in Enfield which is not so far from North London. You could visit Crews Hill in Enfield where there is a whole road of garden centres.

Having a south facing aspect give you many opportunities. Before deciding on what to plant or sow and investigation into your soil type would be well worth while.

What about a mini wild flower meadow containing some oxeye daisies. There no more uplifting sight than a close encounter with some form of wildlife.

Happy gardening
TheSustainableGardener

What's the soil like? Quite often front garden soil isn't the best so you might want to improve it.

How big is it?

I'd ask your neighbours. They're likely to know what theirs are and they'll probably be pleased that you liked their gardens.

We’ve just done ours. I got ideas from Pinterest. We wanted no lawn as it was tiny so dig it up and used a mix of large pebbles, gravel and cobbles to make borders in which I planted a mix of grasses, heuchera, box and and salvia and repeated the plants along the border. We then bought a huge pot and I managed to find a reduced Acer to put in it. They’re my favourite tree. With roses and peonies it sounds like you like a soft and romantic garden. Maybe some rosemary and lavender plus lupine too? Think about winter colour when there are no blooms. Maybe some shrubs that get berries in autumn and winter?

Also watch shows like garden rescue for ideas.

It is worth visiting garden centres every few weeks all year round. Most of them stock things which are currently in flower or at their best for the season, so if you are looking for a shrub that flowers in late summer, that's the best time to go and look for ideas.

If you already know exactly what you want, you can often find good bargains. If they have spring-flowering shrubs left over and new summer stock is coming in, they will often reduce the past-the-best stuff to make room. Nothing wrong with it at all, it has just finished flowering for the year.

Also I have found some bargains at car boot sales. Much cheaper than garden centres.

A new garden! So exciting.

The first things to consider are (1) how much effort do you want to put in it on a continuing basis, and (2) do you have a watering point in the front garden. There’s no point putting in lots of thirsty and hungry plants if you can’t water them, or plants that need a lot of pruning and deadheading if you don’t have time.

Then you need to consider all seasons, and think about including evergreens for the winter, spring flowers (bulbs are good), summer flowers and late flowering plants for the autumn.

Evergreens don’t need to be conifers - Fatsia and aucuba are easy to grow evergreens and a good foil for flowering plants. But they may be too big in a small space. Nandina is small and lovely all year round and does not require pruning.

It’s great that you know some flowers you like. A good starting point may be your nearest B&Q garden centre, they have very fair prices and plants are generally healthy. I would also ask your neighbours if you like their garden - ime gardeners are always happy to talk about their plants ☺️

With roses, there’s lots of choices including varieties that flower continuously over many months.

Peonies are lovely, but the flowering season is very short (2 weeks or so, usually in May or June) and then the foliage is not the most interesting the rest of the year. So ideally they would only be a small accent in the garden - you shouldn’t have them as a focus point. They are also sulky - they don’t like being moved and can take years to start flowering, so you need to be patient.

I would perhaps focus on long flowering and low maintenance flowers e.g. yarrow, daisies, some lillies such as Eucomis, dahlias, salvia (these are just a few examples out of hundreds!). Try and have things with varied height, flower shapes and foliage so you’ve got lots of interesting things to look at. You can decide to have everything in a palette of similar colours (eg white, pale blue and pink) or add splotches of yellow, orange, purple and red.

Also, I would avoid anything that attracts slugs as they can be a massive problem in London.

good luck op

I have a small front town garden which sounds very similar (house is on a south (front) north (back) axis). We have a large front bed with edging, then a granite stone/pebble section with a large terracotta pit in the middle, plus a log store. In the bed the things that work really well in the sun, but dealing with pollution etc (albeit it’s not a very busy road) are the following plants repeated (I have about three of each:

• Gertrude Jekyll roses (flower early may to late Oct on repeat)
• lavender
• a Winter Fire dogwood (the only real winter interest - spectacular but boring in summer and I have to hard prune it in early spring, but worth it for winter!!)
• Mexican fleabane
• I do alium bulbs each year (the purple gloves)
• Purple wallflower
• (Just one!) lovely hellebore for winter

In the big terracotta pot I have a star magnolia which I’m glad of in the spring

By the front door I have smaller terracotta pots of herbs (purple sage loves being there), more lavender and a slightly larger pot that I do with narcissus and tulips each year then replace them with white geraniums (not the hardy ones) each year.

I love the overall combo!