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Design Dilemma Gardens

What would you do? Garden needs love and help!

4 years ago

Hi everyone, hoping to get your brilliant assistance with ideas and advice. We have a house with a decent size south west facing garden, we get the sun from around 12pm through until sunset. After having some renovations done to the house, the garden is in desperate need of ideas. There is a grass area (although the grass is in a pitiful state) of 8m x 6m and a patio next to the house of 7m x 5.5. and some borders around the grass area with some hebes (which do very well) and a gooseberry bush. The only flowers that are in the garden are bluebells and we would love some more plants and flowers. Please see the photos. There is a second hand drawn plan (my son's proposed design based on his desire to have a longer lawn) - the measurements are in metres and are correct for the total footprint of the garden but please ignore other ideas and use the plan showing what we have today. (I couldn't remove the Proposed plan from the attachments to this post for some reason)

My 15 year old son would love a longer length of lawn that he could use play football. We have just taken out a huge bush that means that we can now see through from house to the end wall of the garden to see what length of lawn we could get. It doesn't have to be full length in the entire garden but I don't know if it would look strange if it were not symmetrical?

The only thing we are absolutely committed to keeping is the apple tree (marked AT on our plan) and the elder tree on the back wall. I much prefer flowers and a bee/bird-friendly type of garden. We have a mish-mash of fencing around the really quite lovely old walls with a particularly ugly fence (north-facing) to the left side of the patio as one faces down towards the garden. We had 3 large bamboo plants on the north but three bad storms in a row pretty much killed them. Am trying to revive them at the moment. Sitting on the patio is not exactly a joy :-(

We live close to the sea (salty winds) so any plant or flower needs to be able to withstand that kind of environment, but we are pretty sheltered from wind and sunny in the actual garden. Anything planted close to the north facing wall has to tolerate all day shade if planted close to the wall. The soil is reasonable (a little chalky but not bad). We also have a girl dog so I think that impacts the lawn with urine staining :-(

I'd be so grateful for your thoughts and ideas;

example pictures would be fantastic. We are beginners at gardening but very willing to work on it!

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Comments (5)

Jonathan
4 years ago
I think the inevitable patchy grass of a teenagers football pitch is at odds with your desire to look out at a nice garden.
You could perhaps put a kick about area towards the back of the garden and then hide it behind trellis.
Alternatively postpone plans for the garden for a couple of years and make decisions when it doesn’t have to be a football pitch.
Sonia
4 years ago
I agree with Jonathan. My gardening mad neighbour had to wait until her children grew up before she could plant a proper plant filled garden. I like your patio. Won’t be long now!
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honeyry
Original Author
4 years ago
Thanks for your comments. I'm hoping to get some ideas on how to accommodate both a football area, and some thoughts on flowers and plants to make it more attractive. I'm thinking that the longest length in the garden, on the north wall could be turfed up to the back wall to give a football play area, but at the moment it's only lawned part way. There is a slope upwards to the back. Would it look weird to have lawn to the back wall only on one side? Any ideas on flowers/plants that would work in this kind of environment?
rachelmidlands
4 years ago
Hi honeyry. I don’t think it would look weird having the lawn on the left as it would be more central to the patio.

Hope you don’t mind but I took the liberty of doing a quick sketch as well. It still uses the full length of the garden so should keep your footie fan happy 😊. What I do think is that you need more definition to your borders so using a lawn edger to keep grass encroaching on plants/shrubs/trees (see pics). This will keep plants healthy in the long run as they won’t be competing for nutrients. Also added a patio and shed in the top right NW corner. This might be a nice little sitting area in for a morning cuppa, the shed and the addition of some trellis would give you some privacy from the neighbours. Something like this wouldn’t need doing straight away as I’ve kept the basic layout with the path relatively unchanged. Did add a little extra in the way of a little semi circle of hard landscaping in front of the seps. This is just a transition between borders, lawn and patio and could be anything...paving, tiles, cobbles and so on.

There are a plenty of plants that are suitable for your garden. The RHS website is a valuable resource when researching. Two that spring to mind which are virtually indestructible (great for stray footballs) are red valerian and buddleia. Both need hacking back to near ground level in late autumn and will grow like the clappers come spring. Be aware that red valerian (also grows well north facing) can be considered invasive in some parts as it self seeds prolifically and usually where you don’t want it like in the walls or in between paving slabs but it’s easy enough to pull out.

For improving the lawn I’m sure there are plenty of tips and tutorials online. I myself have a dog that makes a right mess of the grass. I’ve recently purchased this stuff https://www.envii.co.uk/shop/neuturine/ but I’ve yet to test it so can’t vouch for it and its a little expensive for what it is. Supposed to to change the Ph of the soil so that urine doesn’t burn it (or something scientific like that 🙂). Just hope it works!

Here‘s my sketch and pics.

Red valerian

Buddleia

example of curvy border
honeyry thanked rachelmidlands
honeyry
Original Author
4 years ago
Rachel, thank you so much for those ideas and taking the trouble to draw a sketch; I love them! 😍 I'll check out the RHS website too and have this morning ordered some anti-wee wee !

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