Making a symmetrical Georgian flower border

[FamilyWiggs]

:lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[worms]

Sorry to be awkward, but can I put in a vote for retaining the boundary hedge? It takes such a long time to create something like that and on top of a hill it surely must be doing quite a good job in sheltering and warming your garden? As a backdrop to the cottage garden portion, the informal nature of the existing hedge might be an advantage. Perhaps if you really want to "sort it out", you could consider a height reduction to the beasties that want to be shrubs and a "crown lift" to those that want to be trees? You could then manage to have a view between them without losing all of the shelter.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Yes I want geese too. And ducks. And alpacas. Robin, hopefully we can have some happy chats about pigs in the future, I fancy the Gloucester Old Spot myself though I should really get a Lincs breed.

Moo, we'll definitely visit the Old Vicarage at East Ruston, thanks for that. I'd like to have a proper Norfolk holiday at some point, having been all over the world, I'm now more than happy to potter round the next county!

Sorry to be awkward, but can I put in a vote for retaining the boundary hedge? It takes such a long time to create something like that and on top of a hill it surely must be doing quite a good job in sheltering and warming your garden?

Of course you can. It is easy to forget the icy gales of winter when it's like this. The cottage garden portion would have a stunning view of poppy fields stretching to the horizon right now if it weren't for the hugely dense hedge however, but maybe I can do something with the excellent suggestions of this thread and create points where the view can be seen.

It's finding the balance between an ordered, tamed space and a scruffy wilderness that's hard. The first can be extremely dull, the second can be magical (children love this garden because of all the secret paths through the hedges) but also just look terribly neglected.

 

[worms]

the second can be magical ... but also just look terribly neglected.

Yes, I have various borders where I use the excuse that I am "gardening for wildlife"!

Since I am trying to help an old Leylandii hedge become a mixed native hedge (without losing height/privacy/wind protection in the meantime) I am envious of the dense mixed hedge that you have. I am transplanting all the self-seed holly seedlings from around the garden into the base along with some hawthorn, birch, pine, rowan and crab apple, but progress is painfully slow. However the brambles are now thriving and a hedgehog has taken up residence, so I guess that is a sign of progress.

Of course it will look great in thirty years time, at which point someone will rip it all out and then plant Leylandii, because they need something fast growing to shield them from the wind!

 

[JoceAndChris]

It's always the way...we go round and round in circles. If you were nearer I'd bring you bigger holly trees than seedlings, but you're in Ultima Thule, which sounds a very long way away. I sympathise with the Leylandii challenge, my feelings about conifers have been noted elsewhere!!

My perfect windbreak aesthetically is a line of poplars, I think they look so lovely. I'd like a line of those to shelter my vegetable patch/ chicken farm- that's currently a bit exposed.

Very happy to hear you have hedgehogs, I remember hearing on the radio a couple of years back that some parts of Scotland had a hedgehog plague and they were contemplating a cull- if you have some spare, send them down to me please!

 

[Hatster]

How much time / money have you got to spend on the garden, Joce? I'm thinking that with all the work you need to do on the house, realistically you don't have either much in the way of either? Are there garden jobs that you like doing, or that you really hate doing?

 

[Moo]

Sorry to be awkward, but can I put in a vote for retaining the boundary hedge? It takes such a long time to create something like that and on top of a hill it surely must be doing quite a good job in sheltering and warming your garden? As a backdrop to the cottage garden portion, the informal nature of the existing hedge might be an advantage. Perhaps if you really want to "sort it out", you could consider a height reduction to the beasties that want to be shrubs and a "crown lift" to those that want to be trees? You could then manage to have a view between them without losing all of the shelter.

Wise words indeed; the 'peepholes' at the Old Vicarage have been made in some unmanicured hedges (a mixture of shrubs and trees) , and are all the more wonderful for that. They almost look as though they're an accident of nature.

 

[JoceAndChris]

I almost feel like downing tools and driving there now!

Thanks for your concern Hatster. As mentioned before I don't have work or children, so one way or another Beacon Cottage gets 8 hours of work from me every day, sometimes more. I'm happy to do 12 hour days in the garden in summer, never happier in fact. I do a lot of heavy work but leave the power tools in the main to Chris, who does serious amounts of chainsawing lopping chopping and tree felling at weekends.

I reckon we'll be done in about 30 years!

As for money, yes, I'd dearly love to fling money at all the problems and have good tradesmen sort them all out but it's not an option on one income, most things that will happen here will be DIY (but I'd like Biff to do the windows downstairs at some point). One day we'll sell our London flat, but Chris wants that money as a pension anyway, so expensive jobs and items will just have to be saved up for. (and may never happen, I suppose I have to accept)

A lot of gardening is pretty cheap, especially in Lincolnshire. Neighbours swap plants, young plants are pennies... stuff grows without you even planting it.

 

[Hatster]

Have pm'd Joce with the exciting results of my research!

 

[worms]

If you were nearer I'd bring you bigger holly trees than seedlings...

Unfortunately, I have read that the success of transplanting holly plants is in inverse proportion to their size. Moving the self-seeds that I come across while weeding has resulted in a near 100% success rate, even in the gloom below the Leylandii (although since the lowest of my Lelyandii branches leave the trunk at about 6 feet up, it is no longer as gloomy as some).

I'm not sure what the success rate of transplanting hedgehogs would be, but from the look of your garden pictures, I would be surprised if you don't already have the odd resident. (Unless they are boycotting your garden for your advocacy of chemical spraying on the roses...and did I spy a patio heater in one of these shots? :wink: )

 

[Hatster]

They're surprisingly good at hiding - hedgehogs that is - I've seen only one in our garden once in the 8 months I've lived here, and I'm in the garden a lot, including in the twilight. It clearly knew exactly where it was going and was heading down a regular route, so I don't know why I hadn't seen it before or after.

 

[worms]

They're surprisingly good at hiding - hedgehogs that is

We had been aware of the droppings long before we ever saw the beast itself (if you are interested in such things, the droppings are small black and elongated). I've heard our hedgehog more often than I have seen it - loud chomping in the undergrowth as it consumes the plentiful supply of slugs and snails and a lot of scrabbling and shaking in the ground-elder forest (in a sort of Michael Bentine way)*

*an outdated cultural reference, I know, but I am sure there are at least some contributors here who will remember the square world!

 

[Hatster]

I'll have a look out for the droppings, then. I deduce it has been in one particular border by the sudden improvement in health in a dahlia which had been getting very slug eaten, but I'll try spotting droppings and listening for heavy breathing next!

 

[Schoolmarm]

Toad poo confuses lots of people. Toad poo is black and elongated but smooth with both ends rounded like a bullet.

If it is like a teeny dog poo shape !!! then it is a hedgey.

I kept two young ones one winter as they were underweight so saw lots of poo in their pen.