The Courtyard
When you have a hot and sunny sheltered area enclosed on three sides, what else do you do but a courtyard garden?
It took a while to get to grips with this part of the garden. At one point it was going to be the main doggie area so they could have a wee yard to do their business and I let is grass (well weed) over but kept it mowed short. Turned out t wasn't really suitable for the pooches and by chance I got lucky with a load of slabs on Freecycle.
The soil from the raised tattie bed came in useful to fill the dipped corner of the Japanese Garden and both the left hand and back sleepers remain in situ.
There was a raised bed made of rocks, rather like a wishing well structure that had a cotoneaster (bane of my life) growing out of it and I started to dismantle it. In the picture to the left you can't even see the back bedroom window which has another cotoneaster in front of it.
I've watched the experts on all of the garden makeover programmes do hard landscaping. You need to level the ground, put in hardcore, sand, get a whacker plate and all kinds of stuff to do it properly. So I got the spade out, scraped off the weedy-grassy layer, made it as level as I could and laid the slabs straight on the soil. I'm sure a landscaper would be absolutely horrified!
Ok, so there is a wee bit of a slope and one or two of the slabs rock a little but I was convinced they would bed in, in time and anyway who wants a perfect patio with a wonky cottage?
Its amazing what a transformation a lick of paint will give you. I used Ronseal Garden paint in Sage to paint the front of the metal and wooden sheds. It gives a sense of cohesion as well as just looking better. Between the two sheds I put up some chicken wire and the clematis 'The President' works its way across the gap giving a profusion of purple flowers in late summer.
While I was very grateful for my slabs from freecycle, there just wasn't quite enough to do the whole of the courtyard so I've used gravel to finish the floor.
The courtyard get the sun for most of the day in summer and as such gets pretty hot. Many of the plants that like a bit of heat are in pots here, such as the agapanthus that stays out all winter and the chocolate cosmos and lemon verbena that spend their winters in the greenhouse.
New for 2020
We're going tropical! If you've already had a read of the blog, you will see that big changes are planned for the courtyard. The year has been a bit of a write-off in many ways but thanks to lovely friends and the internet, I've been able to start a collection of tropical foliage plants including - tetrapanax papyrifer, Fatsia japonica - Spider's Web, Ensete ventricosum 'Maurelii and Musa sikkimensis.
The tetrapanax has grown considerably and I plan to take it out of its pot and pop it in the ground next year, then, hopefully it will really take off and start to provide the canopy of the new topical garden.