Thursday 5 February 2009

Start Planning Your Dream Garden Now

There’s a thick carpet of snow everywhere and apart from the odd sledging trip with the kids and maybe an impromptu snowball fight, no-one feels much like going outside, or thinking about their garden. However, within a few short weeks Spring will be upon us bringing longer, warmer days and then our short, sweet summer will arrive. Having been shut indoors all winter, I know I will want spend as much of my time in the garden as possible and I’m sure I’m not alone.

This is all well and good for me. I have a lovely garden with a gorgeous black Limestone terrace right outside my dining room with a simple water feature and plenty of room for entertaining a large group of friends. At the top of the garden there is a romantic, secluded seating area with a pergola and lots of scented climbers, paved with reclaimed brick with a hand-laid mosaic centrepiece - at night it’s the perfect place to enjoy a glass of wine, lit with a simple string of fairy lights and some hanging lanterns. In the rear garden the planting is exhuberant, ecelectic, colourful and low-maintenance, including a herb garden from which I collect fresh herbs daily. In the front garden, pretty mixed shrub and herbaceous borders surround the house and path leading to the front door.

If you’d like a beautiful garden with space for the kids, which is also a great place to eat, relax and entertain then you really need to start thinking about it now. So many people look out into their gardens in May, realise they want to make some changes and contact me, by which time it is too late to get the garden designed and built before the summer. The three excellent landscape contractors I work with are currently booked up until April, and by May they will be booked well into August.

The best time to think about how you want to use your garden in the summer and what changes are required to make this possible is now. You have time to think through your requirements, change your mind a few times, and get the plan drawn up in time to ensure that you get one of my thoroughly professional and experienced landscapers to do the work for you. If you want to do the work yourself this is fine, but you’ll probably be doing it in your spare time, and it always takes longer than you think. So, get planning and don’t leave it too late.

You might just want a new planting scheme, you may wish to address one problem area of your garden, or you may decide that nothing but a full re-design will suffice. This is fine. You can use all or part of my service to get your dream garden, so give me a call and let’s meet up for a chat to ensure you get your garden in time for the Summer.

Have a look at my Web site to see some of the gardens I’ve designed.

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