Best gardens of 2011
It’s high time we updated our garden portfolio. We were breaking ground on all sorts of projects around Nottinghamshire from January onwards. We laid thousands of square metres of paving, built hundreds of steps and boundary walls, erected hundreds of metres of fencing, laid dozens of lawns and planted up countless borders. Here are a few of our projects (and downtime images) from 2011. We’ll continue to update the gallery with more of our gardens over the coming weeks and months.
Last year was a long and busy year, starting with one of the hardest winters on record, freezing our Newark garden makeover into the ground. We conquered the weather though, finished the patio and turfing ready for the family’s new summerhouse to be erected. Not easy on nights of sleep broken by the newborn baby sister to our then three-year-old.
A winter garden makeover meant they were able to enjoy their brand new garden right from the start of the season, which last year started in April.
Remember those heady days of sunshine. We do, having taken off to Pembrokeshire for a few days with family and friends for Easter. We were blessed with a week of blazing sun. Perfect for the children (19 of them in all) to enjoy the beaches and a Sunday morning Easter Egg hunt. And our group made the most of the chance to eat, drink and generally be very merry late into the evening at our holiday hideaway.
One of our biggest projects to date (having built the walls and steps of this patio terrace in Mapperley last year), we set about returfing the extensive lawn, sculpting and planting the borders, building the seating area and creating the play area at the beginning of this summer. We also sourced the play equipment, which has provided a stylish and impressive place for a child and his friends to while away sunny days.
When we came to this West Bridgford project, there was but a large pile of rumble and tumble-down steps leading into the garden. The family had recently installed tri-fold doors to the rear of their house. They wanted a neat patio to create a relaxing seating area. The steps were to be reinstituted.
Working on such gradients is no mean feat but we’re pretty adept at creating beautiful and functional intimate spaces on different levels. The result is a lush, shaded and peaceful area to enjoy the fairer months.
Working out in the Vale of Belvoir is always a pleasure. The surroundings and characterful buildings create stunning backdrops to our gardens. None more so than these 16th century cottages, next to a churchyard in Denton. The cottages were knocked into one a long time ago and the current owners have been working hard to update this house, creating a stunning and tranquil family home. They wanted new pathways, walls and planting borders to create an inviting and homely entranceway. Particularly important as it sits next to an extensive open lawned area. Our design does just that, creating the perfect framework for lush cottage garden planting to be added over time.
Most of us, though, don’t have the settings of Beatrix Potter and Enid Blyton stories outside our kitchen windows. We do, however, want to make the most of our gardens. This snapshot of a modern-look patio and lawn updated the dishevelled garden of a Victorian Lady Bay villa. This flush contemporary look was the result of weeks of planning, sourcing materials, hard graft and painstaking attention to detail to ensure the angles were exact, pointing was precise and all the other details of the garden were just so. We’re pleased to say that our customers were pleased as punch with the results. We were quietly satisfied too.
Conversely, this family wanted a classic look for their modern but stylishly traditional home. The challenge here was to create a polished look on a respectable budget but in an awkward location. We dug out and stripped back the ‘bare minimum’ approach installed by the developers, which had become tired after just a few years. We replaced it with a new patio, curved walls, steps leading up to the new lawn, decking with atmospheric lighting, new fencing, a new gate and the foundations for the new shed. We delivered fantastic value for money for a very happy West Bridgford family.
The hard graft of a long spring and summer was rewarded with some time in our favourite landscape in the French Pyrenees. This view was worth the two-hour walk uphill carrying our nine-month-old on my back and plying our then four-year-old with malt loaf until she reached the top. She did eight-miles in all. Start ‘em young and she’ll not whinge when she’s older, we say.
The links effect
Our new links page provides you with all sorts of helpful connections to make your life greener, leaner and ... more fun. Attract more wildlife into your garden, convert to green energy, build an eco shed, or get yourself a garden room… hopefully our suggestions will point you in the right direction.
We’ve spent the last few weeks pulling together some of our favourite organisations and some useful contacts for you to be able to make the most of your garden (and of other people’s gardens). There are links to:
Gardening help & wildlife conservation advice:
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS)
Gardeners’ World
RSPB
River Cottage
The Allotment Organisation
Chicken Keeping
Nature Detectives
Days out to beautiful places and gardens
The Open Gardens Scheme
National Trust
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Woodland Trust
Specialist garden buildings
Roomworks
EcoHab
Waltons
And finally there are some useful contacts if you’re looking for a more sustainable lifestyle.
We hope you find our launch collection of some use. We’ll keep it updated with new contacts as we come across them.
Landshare: For people who want to garden but have no land
Allotments are in short supply but the number of people after one has spiralled. Canny landless gardeners have cottoned on to the ingenious Landshare scheme.
Under the scheme, started by the River Cottage team, people offer up gardens or land they can no longer maintain themselves for people wanting to grow their own veg or get into gardening. And now the National Trust has jumped on board, listing hundreds of sites on the Landshare website. As part of their initiative to create 1,000 allotments by 2012, more than 20 National Trust properties around the UK are running allotments, community gardens and orchards through Landshare.
Since its launch in 2009, Landshare has grown into a thriving community of more than 67,000 growers, sharers and helpers. It has brought together people who have a passion for home-grown food, connecting those who have land to share with those who need land for cultivating food.
With The National Trust getting involved in Landshare it shows that anyone can offer up their land. If you have a plot of land or garden which is becoming neglected, visit Landshare to see if it could be the answer to your maintenance issues. Or, if you’re looking for a plot of land to tend, check out the matchmaking map to find a garden near you.
Landshare has benefited people who:
•Want to grow their own fruit and veg but don’t have anywhere to do it
•Have a spare bit of land they’re prepared to share
•Can help in some way – from sharing knowledge and lending tools to helping out on the plot itself
•Support the idea of freeing up more land for growing
•Are already growing and want to join in the community
Quick, the sun’s out…
There’s the promise of a few days of sunshine. After you’ve mowed the lawn for one of the last times this year, throw the gardening gloves in the wheelbarrow, grab your sunhat and get out for the day to enjoy one of this region’s best-loved gardens.
Hardwick Hall was built by Bess of Hardwick in the 1590s and has remained unaltered since. It’s a spectacular day out - not least because of the glorious herb gardens, orchards and lawns. What better time to be there than on a glorious English autumn day? And for just £2.50, you can take part in a tour of the engine room of Hardwick Gardens with the National Trust garden team. Click here for details.
An illuminating evening at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park
The Yorkshire Sculpture Park, near Wakefield, is holding a rare opportunity to visit the park at night to see Spanish artist Jaume Plensa’s outdoor works illuminated.
Book now to make sure you’re one of the 25 people at the event on 26th November 2011.
This extraordinary body of new and recent work by renowned Spanish artist Jaume Plensa is exhibiting until January 2012 and is worth a daytime visit at least. But for a mere £30 per adult, you could enjoy an exclusive curator-led tour with YSP director Sarah Coulson of the Underground Gallery, dinner and the rare opportunity to see outdoor works Spiegel and La Llarga Nit beautifully illuminated in the landscape.
Encouraging tactile and sensory exploration, this vibrant exhibition of Plensa’s work includes a 50-metre curtain of poetry made of suspended steel letters, large illuminated sculptures in the landscape, and engraved gongs that visitors can strike to fill the gallery with sound.
For dinner, an out-of-hours guided tour and a one-off event at the very special Yorkshire Sculpture Park, we think £30 is a bargain. And what a lovely experience if you’re celebrating a special occasion.
Plensa’s sculpture gives physical form to the intangible, using the body as a way of exploring what it means to be human and engaging with universal themes: love, memory, language and despair. Plensa has completed significant public art projects around the world, including the momentous Crown Fountain (2004) in Chicago. In 2009 he created Dream, a 20-metre high sculpture for St Helens as part of Channel 4’s Big Art Project. 2011 will also see Plensa’s first public art project in New York City. Echo will be presented from 5 May – 14 August 2011 by the Madison Square Park Conservancy. In the UK, Chichester Cathedral recently announced Plensa’s winning proposal for the Hussey Memorial Commission, Together, expected to be unveiled in the Cathedral in 2012.
Garden shows - dates for 2012
Enjoyed this year’s show gardens? Save the date for your favourite show in 2012.
RHS Cardiff Show 20-22 April 2012. Buy tickets
Malvern Spring Gardening Show 10-13 May 2012 Buy tickets
RHS Chelsea Flower Show 22-26 May 2012 Buy tickets
RHS Tatton Park Flower Show 18-22 July 2012 Buy tickets
Don’t miss September’s Malvern Show
A perfect autumn day out for food and gardening lovers.
After a long year, there’s nothing better than enjoying the fruits of your harvest. Celebrate the best nature has to offer at The Malvern Autumn Show. The event hosts a range of cookery demonstrations, gardening talks, vegetable displays, vintage tractors, crafts and more. Enjoy a day out to remember. with Mark Diacono and the River Cottage Team in The Good Life Pavilion, lending you their expertise in growing your own food. The Orchard Pavilion features the best of England’s orchards, an edible gardens exhibition and an artisan food market and a festival of tasty meat, jams and pickles to explore. If that’s not enough to whet your appetite, chef Gino D’Acampo will be cooking up an Italian feast.
It’s not all glorious food though. The keen gardener will be able to take in the RHS Glorious Flower Show, watch landscapers build a show garden live, watch the National FInals of the World Skills UK Landscape Gardening Competition and bear witness to giant veg at the Midlands Vegetable Society Championships. There are impressive flower and vegetable displays aplenty in the Harvest Pavilion and talks and demos from the RHS’s Tender Plant Committee in the Plant Demonstration Theatre. And of course, you’ll be able to stock up on gardening tools, accessories, plants and sundries. We don’t know how you’ll fit it all in.
Buy tickets
Pleasure gardens of Parwich
Parwich is a little-known village on the edge of the Peak District National Park. The time to visit is during its Open Gardens Weekend in June. We were charmed as much by the views, gardens and backdrop as we were by the cream tea in the Julian Marsh-designed community centre.
One of the finest examples of a cottage garden we’ve seen. Cultivated and nurtured by an exceptionally talented interior designer.
Sectioning gardens with secluded areas of planting establishes charm and interest in a garden and creates great play areas for children.
The wife and children set their sights on a garden with a sense of open space. It’s hard work living with three girls.
We like a good set of stone steps. We wish we’d been responsible for building these ones.
The greenhouses of the great hall.
The stunning terraces of the Great Hall afford incredible views over Derbyshire’s Peak District.
When is the best time to water your plants?
With the hot weather finally stumbling into action we look at when you should water your garden plants.
As a general rule the answer is actually pretty simple:
The best time of day to water is always in the morning.
This gives your plant time to absorb the water and get ready to handle everything it’s going to have to do during the day. You know the sort of thing: handling the heat & cold and absorbing all the yummy nutrients out from the soil and generally getting on with growing into the perfect plant within your garden design scheme.
Some plants need more water than others, some require less, so if you’re planning a new garden design we have oodles of experience with planting and can advise you on what plant needs how much water as part of our service.
It might help stop your garden looking like an arid desert… unless you want that sort of thing of course, in which case we can show you how to keep it looking nice and dry!