Parts of my garden

Inspiration comes from all parts of the garden ...

FRONT GARDEN (SW)


This is the part which took and still does take most of my time and calories; being very close to the house, half of the place was wrecked after the rage of barbaric hordes of builders, while the other half was the mighty kingdom of English ivy. The only things to survive the carnage were a couple of decades old cedars, spruces, pines, firs, some kind of rare juniper, an apple and a pear tree, parts of the hedge and my nan's beloved magnolia tree. Everything else was wiped out.

Ever since I got the privilege to do something about it and bring its old looks back, gardening has become a sort of a cerebral challenge for me! Nothing gives me more joy then learning about new plant species, remembering their names, the way each of them should be cared for and how to blend them into something that would give me pleasure and joy to look at. Every plant has a story to tell and a personality to show. I never thought I could be so absorbed by all this, up to the point where I work myself to exhaustion by rooting out the ivy, shifting soil and manure(for example) and still wearing a big, cheeky smile, thinking about how good it's gonna work out for my plants and how rewarded it'll make me feel.

Now let's meet some of the younger residents of the garden ; I will not write any special info on them, I'm leaving this for my future posts, as I want this blog to grow along with my garden.

In the sole SW corner of the garden, there's a young, sensitive Crape myrtle, with a perennials-vs-annuals border to the south and small evergreen border to the west.Then the magical trio with the tree-shaped evergreen blue Ceanothus, the enchanting Acer palmatum 'Atropurpureum' with a smaller Acer palm. dissectum growing beneath. Another from the Ceanothus family, the deciduous pink 'Marie Simon' lives nearby.
To the south: Pampass grass (Cortaderia selloana), a lovely shrub of Mexican orange blossom (Choisya ternata 'Sundance') and Hebe albicans; a tree of hybrid tea rose, a Tamarix, an old Fig tree, a few trellis of grapevine (V. vinifera) and a hybrid Wisteria, ending with an elderly Juniperus, a tiny Picea abies 'Pygmaea' and a rare Greek fir (Abies cephalonica).
To the west: a few Cedars including Cedrus libani, atlantica and deodara; a lavish Pinus silvestris, Pinus nigra var. dalmatica (Black Dalmatian pine), an elderly Mediterranean (Aleppo) pine and a few Picea omorika trees (Serbian spruce).


SIDE GARDEN (N)

Both my front and vegetable garden have been fence-protected, in order to keep the naughty pack of dog paws from cabbaging things, storming through borders and using wee-wee nutrients on certain plants. They are generally very 'genteel' dogs when alone, but when they get together (there's 3 of 'em) it's the more the merrier. Behind the thick boxwood hedge, side garden to the north is one of the dog-friendly areas.



Surrounded by grapevine on one side and my dear neighbour's estate on the other, it consist of a wildflower lawn, grass lawn, and some apple, cherry, quince and plum trees.











<-- path leading to the backyard and veg garden

BACK GARDEN (E/SE)

vegetable garden

A faint image of what used to be a vigorous veg garden while people had enough time to just work in the garden all day and live off it. In the future I'm hoping to spend as much time in there as I do in my front garden.

SIDE GARDEN (S)

By far the driest and sunniest part of my garden, starting with the eternal yuccas grove...

and stretches to the SE part where the whole of the back garden shifts to a raised level, since in ancient times there used to be a river channel, and it goes all along the south border of the estate; most of it is hedged in 'smaragd' white cedars (Thuja occidentalis 'Smaragd')