Your best advice for future planning of a well established garden?
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26-10-2021 2:40am#1
Hello! I'm looking for some advice to get ahead of myself somewhat - for anyone who has created a mature garden that they love or is in the process of doing so - which things do you wish your younger self had focused on first? And in the same vain, what are your most cherished elements of your own garden?
I'm currently working on planning stage of a family homeplace renovation, and before works can start on the house likely 2-3yrs down the line, I'd like to incorporate the half acre behind the traditonal lawn area that was formerly wild meadow, temporarily used as a yard (with tens of tons of stone i'll have to remove once I get down to it!) and has been 'rewilding' again for the last ten years, sadly with vast majority briars and nettles. The traditional large back lawn will have to be torn up during construction for septic replacement etc so I won't be focusing any attention there for now.
I know it will be a long process with lots of trial and error and there is no 'cheats' really with gardening, but my thinking is - spend a little extra planting a few semi-mature native trees, permaculture/native blended hedging, would give me some really good bones to work with while I start work on a modest food growing area, and plentiful planting/infrastructure for bees/birds. I'll be consulting a landscape designer in the family on overall layout but wanted to throw this question to a wider audience!
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Is it a fairly level site or will you have to do some terra-forming? If you can confidently plant trees -ie you won't discover you need to do serious levelling later - then this is one of the first things I would suggest. While I do not suggest you buy the very smallest size plants the 4 to 5 foot size of the more common Irish trees is fine, they will soon get going and mature. This has been my experience over the last couple of years planting both small size and 4/5ft trees.
Dig decent sized holes and make sure they have a reasonable depth of good soil, add some rotted manure to the hole and mix well in so the roots do not immediately come in direct contact, add a short stake - just to prevent root rock rather than hold the tree up - and put a bit of wire netting round to keep off rabbits. Keep an eye on fastenings and netting so they don't interfere with the tree. I don't think it is necessary to fertilise trees after that, slower, stronger growth is better than hasty forced height.
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It's a very level sight save for a 10ft section at the very back which is about 8ft heigh at it's peak. Many of our neighbours have reduced or removed their section of that raised area for a river view/direct access to grazing fields (no risk of flooding), I'd be tempted myself but the elevation might work to my favour in adding a bit of height/dramatics at the end of the garden for planting.
Thanks for the advice on tree height, I think you're right - while I'm happy to invest in the garden I won't really get to sit and enjoy it to any real degree for at least another four years with it being a phased renovation on the house so they might as well be growing away in the background and costing me considerably less!
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Oh definitely leave the height, this site in a recently purchased site is very much on slopes and interesting bits, and I really like it. You can easily create a little look-out spot to enjoy the distant view from the top of the hill. Plan on an interesting path to the top.
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I wish I had half an acre to play with. I'd be thinking much along the lines as you however and establishing some semi mature trees. First thing I did was buy a half decent sized native tree as a specimen and if I had the space I'd be planting an orchard or grove just because I could.
When I was younger I didn't get much time to spend outdoors and what was there was for basic utility purposes, animal area, lawn, shed and washing line so not exactly somewhere I'd go to relax or enjoy as a personal space. I've had a lot more time to spend there over the last few years and I've started to make it my own and added all those things which make it somewhere I want to be. It is an additional living area and I treat it as I would any other part of my home. My advice is to spend some time there and allow it to speak to you. Some obvious things like determining the aspect will help with the planning stages for growing and planting and deciding what features you already have that can be utilized or discarded.
Al fresco dining and outdoor living space is a must for me and structures that provide cover can have multiple purposes whilst providing backdrop and architecture to a living garden. I'd keep that space for ornamental plants too, like specimen trees and annual flowers knowing there's a whole lot of room for perennials, shrubs and borders everywhere else.
A water feature, some statuary, bird/pollinator stations and a bit of a lawn with open space for play might be handy if there's kids or dogs to accommodate too.
I'd also have a dedicated growing area for veg and a greenhouse/tunnels for growing and storage for all the necessary things. One can only dream. Wish you well with it.
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Sounds like you will have an interesting project and lots of options with a garden that size. I think it is easier to approach an area that size in pieces rather than try do it all at once but an overall plan is good to draw up first where you can mark out to scale what will fit there in time keeping in mind the mature grown size of what you plant. Even then I think it is always good to lay out what you are going to plant in an area in the pots to get a real picture of how it will look rather than always sticking to what is planned out on paper. I do remove nettles and brambles from my own garden but I think it is OK to leave them grow away in hedgerows and areas I don't need to use much as they support a lot of wildlife.
I have planted a variety of trees here and my own opinion is that the smaller whips that are sold for a couple of euro can actually settle in faster and soon become bigger than some mature trees that I think take longer to establish themselves again when moved to a new garden. I agree about using some protection from rabbit and hare damage for the young tress and found some spare pieces of drainage pipe around the trunks were effective at keeping the hares off the young trees here. I don't agree with adding manure or compost to the planting hole of young trees as the BBC gardener's world program advice which I agree with is that this can lead to the roots staying in the planting hole for longer and just leaving the planting hole with plain soil encourages the roots to reach out deeper into the soil to find the nutrients needed leading to the stronger root system the tree needs to become a mature healthy tree faster. I tend to do my soil improvement just by dumping manure about the place as a mulch and let the earthworms and rain wash it into the soil below.
A pond is also a feature I think is well worth including.
If there is already lots of stone there it may be useful in your new garden for features like edging for areas of shrubs and flowers or small walls with dry stone walls being particularly nice to build if you have the time.
If the area has mature growth already there then it would be worth checking out what you would like to keep from the existing trees and shrubs that may already be growing in places and may be improved by clearing out the less desirable plants. Incorporating what is already looking good makes the job of making a nice garden much easier and this includes maintaining views of nice areas outside the garden.
Happy gardening!
Post edited by macraignil on0 -
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From my own experience doing something very similar:
Plant trees as people have suggested above, but take care of them. The wild nettly weedy growth will quickly swamp them every year. I planted 17 beech whips 5 years ago, and the ones I remembered and took care of are 10 -12 foot high now, but the ones I forgot about are only a third of that. Cut a big circle around each new tree and cover the ground with cardboard and cut grass or whatever you can find to hold back the grass.
Get some sort of rainwater harvest system going. Get some plastic barrels on donedeal and get these working. Water the new trees when it's not raining.
Get a compost heap started, lots of lovely autumn leaves around now. The Internet will tell you to make leaf mould, but this is slow and disappointing in my experience. It's good to mix leaves in with grass clippings, and you'll probably have lots of cardboard boxes and stuff if you're doing renovation work. This will build up quickly and you can use it next spring to mulch around your new trees.
Keep an eye out for pallets and make a three bay compost bin.
Spend a lot of time thinking about logistics. How far from the kitchen do you want to walk for parsley? What is the first thing a visitor sees when they arrive? Does your hose reach everything that needs water? Do you need extra taps? Can you hide away the compost, junk area out the back and put the pretty stuff out the front? What do you want to see from inside the house? What paths will you follow the most?
Which way is south? Is there a shady area?
Enjoy it and don't rush! It's an exciting time!
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Given the near blank slate, I would suggest if you have sufficient fall to plan for one of the downpipes from the future build (certainly if there is a small roofspace or section of roof) to feed to a pond area (assuming you can then put an outflow from it to existing surface water drainage or soakpit)- so an attenuation pond but one that will help to cushion the effect of drought by keeping the pond topped up directly with rainwater. I am planning on retrofitting this idea with my house but it would be much easier to build it in at the start.
Others may consider this a bit mad, but it actually makes sense!
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my own opinion is that the smaller whips that are sold for a couple of euro can actually settle in faster and soon become bigger than some mature trees that I think take longer to establish themselves again when moved to a new gardenI agree that younger bareroot trees settle in faster than the bigger trees that are usually bought potted. However I am comparing the young whips with the next size 4/5ft. Given that the OP was talking about semi mature trees that would be hugely expensive I am suggesting that the 4/5ft size give a more immediate effect than the very young whips, without the expense of the semi-mature ones. I put in one silver birch that was potted (€35+), half a dozen near it that were whips and another half dozen or so a small distance away that were the 4/5ft ones. The big one is fine and doing well, but is not much advanced on when it went it. The whips are healthy but still small, two seasons later, the middle sized ones that were only put in last autumn are looking very chirpy and have made a good bit of growth.
All these were in the big area of the garden and were just planted with a bit of commercial compost dug in. Some that I put in another part of the garden and which I have now had to dig up as I realise they were not in the right place I dug in a small amount (barely a shovelful) of commercial manure well mixed into the soil around the hole and below it, so the roots were not in direct contact and three of them were a very good size with good root systems, the last one I have not moved yet is a daunting size, it will have to come out but its going to be hard work. They were all the 4/5 foot size.
A Bird Cherry, crab apple and turkish hazel that were put in as whips with the first lot of silver birches are very slow, ok but growing very slowly. A couple of hazel whips and a slightly bigger hornbeam that were also at the same time are doing very well, as are the tiny (about 1ft high) hollies.
Everything else is doing fine and as expected, out of two orders I only lost one tree - a wild pear - and even that was just hanging on last time I looked, I will see if it does anything next year.
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Same experience here with the larger ones being slower and to be fair the ones I planted at 4-5ft size were not the commonly grown species that are sold as forestry whips so its not really fair to compare them. Still some of the trees that are biggest now from what I planted are some of the whips that went in about seven years back. Even the same type of tree planted at the same size has turned out to grow at quite different rates depending on how good a position it went into. The biggest ones we got were Tilia cordata(Lime trees) for the driveway that were 30ero each at about 4-5metres tall bare root, and a couple of the more exposed ones have had to be trimmed back a bit since they have been effected by the wind and started to lean to one side a bit. The garden here is near the top of a hill. Most have grown fine but there is a self sown ash tree that I left grow next to one of them that is a similar height now and a couple of the 1metre whips of oak that were planted about the same time are also about the same size although the average height of the oak whips is still a bit smaller. Got a good few of these oaks with beech and some sweet chestnut for free from the local gun club and once kept free of competing vegetation the majority are now fairly good trees.
Only planted some birch for the first time in the spring just gone as the local garden centre had an order for hedging plants that were not collected and so we got them half price and I put a few in a temporary spot as they needed to be planted quickly but some of the birch that were just a metre in height are already after putting on another 50cm or so just in their first summer and one of the bird cherries from the same bunch is about 2metres while the 4foot beech from this planting have not grown a whole lot with more of an issue with weed competition where they went in at the edge of a nearby field. Hornbeam have also proven to be strong growing. Just to illustrate how much better value the whips can be here is the price list from one of the closest nurseries to the garden here and you can see that once you go off the forestry whips list the price can go up by more than a multiple of 10 and I know if I was talking about a garden being prepared as part of a house renovation that was not going to start for 2-3years like the opening poster said which list I would be more focused on buying from. That is not to say that it is not worth splashing out to get a few bigger trees of varieties that just would not be available at a cheaper price.
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I paid €2.10 each for 1-2ft silver birch whips, and €3.50 for 4-5ft, fewer than 10 of each. For those small quantities I think it was worth the relatively small amount extra.
Mildly interesting though, one of the small whips got cut in half - literally, halfway down the stem- by a mower, it grew back and its hard to see the difference now.
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3.50euro is a good price for that size alright so I can see how they could work out better value. Got some hedging trees from the trees on the land company last spring and they were very small but I think they were a good bit cheaper alright so it can be a case of getting what you pay for. The annoying bit with them was getting told after they were paid for theat they would be letting us know when it suited them to deliver them amd this led to the place they were going to be planted not being prepared properly and that length of hedge has been very awkward to get going and now has a few gaps that will need to be filled this winter. I think 1-2 foot would be very liable to getting overgrown by other plants and being more work to get established. It pays to shop around as well. The best section of hedge I've done so far turned out to be most economical to get the hawthorn from one nursery and the hornbeam from another. The hawthorn is another one that recovers very well from being chopped back and I've seen a couple of examples where one accidently broken recovered very quickly to be just as healthy and even better from a hedging perspective in having more branching down lower.
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I would plant a bird hedge of hawthorn, holly and spindle all around the border of the site. I totally agree regarding buying whips rather than potted trees. They grow really well and are a fraction of the price. You just need to plant them in the winter. This nursery in Clare have native trees for a good price and deliver the whips to your door. i would recomend them.
Set aside a woodland area - oak or birch maybe. Oak is excellent for biodiversity supporting huge numbers of insects.
I’ve planted two small woods here oak / birch and a hazel wood.
If you want a wikdflower meadow get some yellow rattle seed it’ll parasitise the grass allowing the flowers to come up. Otherwise it’ll be swamped by grass growth. You only cut it back once in September then.
You will get briars in the woodland but they reduce as the trees grow and with footfall. If no people or animals are going through regularly there will be briars and other growth obviously.
On another note nettles are great for butterflies. The peacock butterfly caterpillars feed on nettles. So if you have a patch you most likely will have butterflies. It’s worth leaving a patch.
Have a seating area to enjoy it but just don’t expect a lawn.
Regarding veg select the sunniest patch and not too windy (depends where you live really). Grow food you’ll eat. You can do raised beds or drills.
You will need to feed the soil to grow veg. Be mindful of access so you can bring in manure in the winter. Set an area aside for a compost bin. This will also be added to the veg beds in winter. Powdered seaweed is great for added minerals if you don’t live by the coast.
I’d put my planned veg area under black plastic or cardboard now to kill off the grass/plant cover over the winter giving you bare soil for planting in the spring.
Good luck with the garden.
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This booklet is helpful as it lists plants that are pollinator friendly.
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On another note hens are great. I have 6 and wouldn’t be without them. Fresh eggs for very little work. Worth considering. Just have a fence around the veg area and a hen house with a run. Mine roam free but if we go away for the weekend they only have access to the run. Put a net over the run. The hen house / run is an investment though. Much cheaper if you build it yourself or repurpose an old shed. Might be a nice addition to the garden.
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