Garden Centre

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Garden visits

So, the one garden we got to visit was a very pretty town garden, recently completely rebuilt and replanted, with lots of hard features like the formal pond, flagstones, sundials and plinths and a low wall, with a small gazebo in one corner for sitting and eating breakfast.

One noticeable feature of the garden was that despite its sheltered location in the middle of the city and in the middle of a row of terraced houses, the plants were suffering from a degree of wind damage. Of course new plants are more prone to this, but even so, it was a sign just how strong and scouring the Sussex winds can be. At the far end of this formal pond, for example, is a small acer and the edges of its finely cut leaves were quite crisp and pale from sun/wind damage.

What did work particularly well in this garden was the limited colour palette: cream through soft yellow to pink and purple in the flowers, and the combination of strong structural plants and hard landscaping to give contrasts of form, especially when the sun shines – whether it would be so impressive during our long wet winters I’m not so sure, but perhaps the winter planting takes account of this by providing richer colours to lift the matt white of the paving and structures.

Labels: acer, formal pond, garden visits, hard landscaping, town garden, wind damage

The All Seasons Gardener at 4:16 AM

---