Suburban garden makeover: from lawn to lush Part 2

In progress: the garden design and its execution

There were several design ideas at work when I was planning this garden layout:

I wanted to develop separate spaces in the garden, each with its own identity;
I wanted to incorporate two planting styles in particular that interested me. Firstly, the big leaved, tropical/exotic look and secondly a more naturalistic look typified by the planting of perennials and grasses, in other words a nod to the Piet Oudorf and Noel Kingsbury style. I realised that these two styles didn’t necessarily sit well together, hence the idea of separate spaces;
I wanted to incorporate a fruit and vegetable garden;
I wanted to break up the formality of the natural rectangular shape of the garden;
I wanted to focus on designing with plants, rather than with hard landscaping materials.

I decided to break the main part of the garden up into two circular spaces of lawn, bordered by deep garden beds. The space nearest the house would be the ‘exotic garden’, this would lead through a narrow gap in the planting to the ‘perennial garden’, beyond which was the ‘productive garden’.

This plan entailed laying out the basic design and removing lots of turf. Ideally, I would have removed the turf, dug over the ground and buried the turf upside down beneath freshly dug soil. The advantage of this is that you retain the crumbly top soil around the turf roots and benefit from the addition of organic matter to the soil as the turf breaks down.

However, I can be an impatient gardener and my plan was to transform this garden in as a quick a time as possible, so digging over the whole site by hand was not on the agenda.

You’ll see what I did in the pictures below. Click on the first image and then click on the arrows to click through to the next one.

t was 29 October when I started. The design and marking out process involved curving lengths of hose pipe. I did most of it by eye, so there were some adjustments as I went along. The suckering lilac and the conifer near the house eventually made way for a herb bed.

I hired this turf remover. It was effective but not perfect …

There was still plenty of turf removal by hand.

Once the turf was cut it had to be rolled up – my wife was co-opted to this task. Those cleared spaces are for the vegetable beds and the green house.

The rolled turf was stored. Once the grass had broken down it made a lovely rich topsoil that I could incorporate back into the garden

Instead of hand digging I used a rotovator. These are effective for large areas but can damage the soil structure if you overdo it.

Next came the addition of about 40 bags of manure.

The suburban garden makeover is now in full progress as the soil is well dug over and looking rich and dark.

5 November and the first plants are in! Two Arbutus unedo trees flank the narrow gap into the perennial garden. Note how the curve of the border at the bottom left looks wrong. That needed correcting.

A frosty morning. It was now mid-November.

Work halted as winter set in. Note the chimney pot on the right. That was stuffed with straw and protecting a banana plant, Musa basjoo. Also notice the two large conifers on the left …

t’s now mid-March. Compare this picture with the previous one and you’ll see that I’ve widened the borders and reshaped some of the curves.

I’ve been marking out the area around the pond. Now some of the perennials are going in.

More perennials are planted, many of which I got from Beth Chatto’s nursery in Essex.

It’s starting to look like a garden. Note the bamboo, Semiarundinaria fastuosa, a lovely straight growing species, where the second conifer used to be.

Late April and there is plenty of Spring blossom around.

Alliums produce some of the garden’s very first flowers.

For part three of this suburban garden makeover – .

For part one – the blank canvas – click here.

Martin Cole

Martin Cole has been an avid gardener for more than 20 years and loves to talk and write about gardening. In 2006 he was a finalist in the BBC Gardener of the Year competition.

He previously lived in London and Sydney, Australia, where he took a diploma course in Horticultural studies and is now based in North Berwick in Scotland. He founded GardeningStepbyStep.com in 2012. The website is aimed at everybody who has been bitten by the gardening bug and wants to know more.

Gardening Step by Step has been cited by Thompson and Morgan, the UK’s largest mail order plant retailer, as a website that publishes expert gardening content.

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