Garden Help!

Hi Folks,

Show me your gardens!!! pleeeeeeease

I'm in need of some garden inspiration on a tight budget! We have gravelled the whole of our garden but because its a decent size its in need of some serious greenery!

i'm off to take its picture in a moment and i'll add it to the thread. Any ideas would be greatfully recieved.

Many thanks

(p.s i'm new to gardening so nothing too un-hardy!!!)


Firstly my favourite plant so far ... asiatic lily, cant wait until it flowers, so pretty.


our (very) blank canvas


My rockery (plants doing well despite my uselessness so far!)


and my tommys, donated by a work colleague

Couple of Acers . Is that one in the pot?.
Grasses.
Cornus-dogwood, red stems in winter.
Low spreading miniature conifer
Some vertical granite stones.
Japanese Lanterns.
Granite bench.
Ying and yang . Put some of your dark slate into the lighter slate and vice versa

keep doing what you are doing, with plenty of pots with plants in on the gravel,
I love lilies & have recently got some tree lillie bulbs which you can also grow in a pot, they are bushy & grow up to 5 feet.
Red cordalines also look nice in a pot.
I'm using plastic pots this year as my terracotta ones always seem to crack in the winter.
Poundstretcher have some nice plastic pots & obilisks for growing things in & they inexpensive

You need lots of nice, big, pots out there it'll look great! I've gone with the Japanese theme, I've got black bamboo's, normal bamboo's, 3 lovely acer trees, one's a palmatum sango kaku, a palmatum katsura, a japanese drooping cherry with branches that all reach the floor, then I have a beautiful gleditsia tree which I just love with it's changing green leaves all year, from bright lime, through yellow, to green and then orange in autumn. These are very slow growing trees, very ornamental and can be kept in pots.

Everything in my garden turns red in autumn, except the bamboo's, I even have a canadian red maple, bloodgood it's called I think, which turns a magnificent red. If you keep them all in pots they will be controllable, especially the bamboo, which seems to have gone mad in my garden, but I have to keep cutting the new shoots which creep under the turf - they should be in pots like I have around the back, coz they can go really wild once planted!

Bamboo's make a lovely rustling sound in the wind too, and are very ornamental, a good background for that fence, especially if you go for the black ones. If you want to take a trip down here with your spade, you're welcome to chop away at some of mine, they're getting far too big now and tall as my house!!!

Thanks for your replies, i'll be off googling all those plant and tree names now!

Some of my current flowers have opened today, including the lily in the picture, its lovely to finally have little splashes of colour out there. We gravelled our last garden and i hated it I'm hoping if i'm a little more involved in this one, chose some pretty plants that i like, that this garden maybe better.

We wanted to get artificial grass but when we priced it up it was coming out very expensive and needed gravel under anyway so we are going to save up and have it down in a few years time. Its easy to clean the popps off the gravel as well, as one of my friends noted its like a huge litter tray

We had bleeding hearts in my last garden, my favourite flower, does anyone know if i can buy them in a garden centre and what name i have to look out for?

You can buy bleeding hearts in garden centres their other name is Dicentra. They also come in white.

Thanks. They sound like they'd be really pretty in white, i shall have a look in the next couple of days.

Just taken some pics for you of some of my stuff out there.
This is the Sango Kaku tree:

It changes colours so much throughout the year, it's really pretty, and faster growing than I would have like if I'm honest!
A bit closer up


This is the Acer Palmatum Katsura, again very pretty, pink and green leaves, but always changing especially in Autumn:


The Japanese Cherry (can't remember the Japanese name!)

for me, this tree looks better without the leaves in winter, or early spring when it looks like this!


This is a nice acer, it was very cheap, and I only bought it coz of the beautiful gold and red leaves it had at the time in November, but it's growing at a fast rate (I have two of these and will repot them soon)


These are a kind of bamboo, which again, keep changing throughout the year, and they stay red all winter long without losing the leaves.

Here's the other one


A fenceline of black bamboo


Some of my bamboo dotted around the garden. See what I mean about how "wild" they can grow!!! I wish I'd left them potted underground, but hey ho lol!

Even the black one on the left is going mad!

... and this one is just plain silly!


Considering this was when we first did it all 4 years ago, I'm now wishing I'd cut back a bit at the start, coz something's gotta give soon, it's getting too crowded out there!


Hmmmm, might start all over again now lol!

Wow!!!! you have such a beautiful garden ( and a lovely house peeking out from behind it too ), Really appreciate you taking the time to take some piccys. I'm especially in love with the Acer Palmatum Katsura, Very pretty delicate flowers, beautiful.

Thankyou, it's been a lot of hard work and a lot of mess to get it like this I remember it well!!!

Now, I could have got those two names the wrong way around, in that the Katsura could well be the sango kaku so Google them both and find the one that has those pink and pale green leaves, coz it really is a pretty one as you say. They do like partial shade, although it gets stinking hot on that patio from mid-day onwards and it seems to be liking it, but of course, it does have some shade from those overgrown bamboo's.

Somebody mentioned those dogwood, they're nice only because they have the red stems, but they don't last long and they end up looking like a load of deadwood instead of dogwood, I took all mine out, they ruined my look, but then I'm no gardener, maybe I didn't tend them enough!

I chose what I chose purely for low maintenance, no weeding, just mow the lawn and water the trees! At the very bottom I have photinia and laurel mixed which makes a brilliant hedge, and over 3 years, it's grown from the 6ft it started off and it's been cut back once and is nearing 15ft, just what I wanted!

I think these potted acers are fab, they constantly change all year long, and when that big tree turns red in autumn, even the bark, it really is a sight to behold.

Good luck with yours, it's exciting doing all the planning!