The stalwarts amongst my readership will recall that I have had a love/hate relationship with my front garden. The lawn has changed its shape a number of times over the years but I still didn’t enjoy being out there. Then back at the start of the year I bit the bullet and decided to get rid of the lawn once and for all and plant up the whole of the front garden.
January 2016
This is how the front garden looked at the end of January – all very neat and tidy but dull, uninspiring and as some of my regular readers said just not me. So during the course of the first half of the year the lawn was lifted and removed and a curving path put in from the driveway to the side gate. The path is more decorative and to give the front garden some structure rather than for a specific purpose but I have seen it used by a visitor which was very gratifying.
July 2016
We decided that the path needed a good strong edge as it is the only landscape feature so my eldest kindly put in a brick edge which I am really pleased with. In fact if it wasn’t for him doing the edging and my youngest son lifting the lawn I don’t think I would have got very far with the project at all. In my usual back to front way the path went in after the majority of the plants mainly because I wanted to see where the natural route would fall and also because the plants needed to get in the ground before the summer was over.
The path is finished now and the majority of the planting is done. I need to tweak the asters around a bit as they went in quite small and I had lost their labels years ago so it was a bit hit and miss how it would turn out. I have a darker flowered aster – Symphytrochium novea-angliae ‘St Michaels’- in the back garden which I will divide and add to the new border as I think I need a darker purple to lift the others.
This is the view from the driveway to the front of the house and I love how pretty it looks. These photos were taken at the start of the month and last weekend I lifted all the zinnias. They will be replaced with tulips and maybe some wallflowers. I have also added some snowdrops and small narcissus along the path edges. Next year I suspect I will also add alliums.
So to conclude I am absolutely delighted that I took the plunge and got rid of the lawn. I actually enjoy being in the front garden now, I love looking at it in the morning from my bedroom window – it just makes me smile. In addition it is more wildlife friendly than the previous front garden with lots of bees and other pollinators buzzing around the flowers and more birds fidgeting around the border.