How to learn to love my garden next year?

[MoiraRoseVibes]

Hi, all.
We moved in to our house eight years ago and we are really lucky to have a good-sized garden - one of the reasons for moving here was so we could get a bigger garden. I was so excited to get my hands on it but the reality is that I have never quite fallen in love with the garden. I love our house but the garden just has an odd feel to me - I can’t explain it but it just doesn’t feel welcoming. Our kitchen leads out onto a big deck which is quite high and you have to go down steps to the garden (it’s a bit of an odd layout and the deck is so windy we rarely sit there). I love our house for many reasons and don’t want to move so I want to work out how to really nurture our garden and maybe research some ways I can make it feel more inviting. Does anyone have any advice or does this sound mad?

Is there a reason for the deck being so high?
It's hard to visualise it without a photo.
Do you have the budget to re-landscape it?

Well you could get glass screens around your deck to provide shelter.

Do you have any photo's?

Would also love to hear if anyone has overcome a similar issue!

Ooh yes photos would help- I don’t have any on my phone that would give a good idea of it but might take some soon!

What do you want to do in your garden?

I have never heard of putting glass around a deck - I’ll have a google. To be honest I’d rather get rid of the deck entirely, I think.

I love gardening (growing veg, flowers all of it), pottering, but also just the feel of it being a natural extension of the house.

Yes - house is on a hill so the house sticks up and has a cellar at ground level, so our ground floor is actually the first floor.

I'd start simple. Get some tulip bulbs and plant them in large pots and you'll see them in April and May. I planted many on Boxing Day last year.

I'm a landscape designer. There's probably lots you could do on a budget that wouldn't involve ripping everything up or redesigning the whole garden. Photos would really help. I'd be glad make some suggestions.

Often the sense of 'wrongness' people feel is a problem with proportion (large gardens feel flat with a lack of vertical height for instance) or lack of enclosure/feeling exposed, like being over looked or a lack of cosiness. Adding high elements like trees or pergolas can help. Defining areas visually with barriers or planting van help with the latter as a pp suggests.

Another issue I see a lot is 'seeing the edges' if you can see a lot of fence bottoms, they are often untidy/dirty and feel unfinished. You can mitigate this with edge planting or even just changing the focus of the garden to more appealing areas.

Feel free to DM me.

Like this photo @MoiraRoseVibes we have one around our patio, also on a slope.

Ah yes! I know what you mean now. Thanks 🙂

@Cerialkiller thanks so much for replying and you have hit the nail on the head - it’s a lack of cosiness - particularly as we are coastal so do experience wind and feel quite exposed. I’m looking for photos!

@MoiraRoseVibes if you are coastal maybe take a look photo's of St Michaels mount and Glendurgan in Cornwall for ideas!

This is a bad pic but the only one I could find. It’s from a few years ago. So the deck is accessed by stairs on the right-hand side rather than being open at the front, which I don’t like. The garden has raised beds at the bottom. We’ve since planted stuff (small trees) along the borders so it’s not as sparse any more. I wonder if we should just demolish the deck and have steps down to the garden instead of a big pointless deck we never use.
[Pic removed by MNHQ on OP's request]

just demolish the deck and have steps down to the garden instead of a big pointless deck we never use. This.
Thanks for the photo. Have a patio area in a sheltered but sunny spot.

Exactly - the area we would walk down to would then be so sheltered and would be warm because it would be sheltered by the brick walls of the house.

You wouldn't even need to remove the deck, just move the furniture. You could have pots of bright flowers or shrubs there instead.

We’ve actually already done that, which has made a difference, but it’s still just not the garden that I want at the moment. It’s a feeling!

What season was the photo taken?
How big is the drop into the garden?
I think you want to get rid of the deck.

Must’ve been early spring. The drop into the garden is the height of the ground-floor cellar (not quite a full storey high as it’s a low ceiling). The garden does look much nicer now btw 🙂
I wonder how hard it is to demolish a deck oneself! Might be quite satisfying…

Offer it on Freecycle as 'Buyer' dismantles.

We moved in to our house eight years ago ... I was so excited to get my hands on it but the reality is that I have never quite fallen in love with the garden.
That's because it is still somebody else's garden, their design.
Re-design it to what you want and you will learn to love it. As you say, it's all about the feeling that you get from it.

I have a bit of a rad idea, not sure if it would work*. Take out the decking and build a courtyard instead, at the cellar level. Your view from the kitchen will be looking down at this courtyard. But at the same time the garden will reach up to you, because it can climb the walls. The courtyard can be a cosy coffee corner (no more wind!) and/or somewhere to grow your kitchen herbs. The access would probably be a flight of steps which I admit is not great for those with mobility problems.
To get an idea of what I am trying to convey (and probably failing miserably), try googling London basement gardens.

*Solid walls wouldn't work (it would spoil the view to the rest of the garden), you want the illusion of a courtyard. Either only two (or three?) walls. Or make the walls very see-through by piercing them with windows / arches. The design depends on where the sunlight falls.

Oh my goodness @senua I really like that idea and the basement garden images are very inspiring. It also strikes me as something that wouldn’t take a huge amount of money to achieve. Thank you for the suggestion!

I’m going to ask MNHQ to remove my photo now for privacy reasons.