Tips for making over your garden

Having delivered over 50 Helping Hands projects and worked with dozens of families and hundreds of volunteers I have been asked a lot of questions over the years, but one of the ones I have been asked the most is “what is your garden like?!”

Up until last year the answer was “nothing much!”, but when Covid hit I suddenly had time on my hands. I decided that transforming my own garden would be a good way to keep my skills up, and maybe learn some new ones along the way. I did my best to document it so that I could share some of the ideas and tips I came up with. I hope it is helpful and can provide a bit of inspiration for your outdoor space.

We started with a blank canvas, a small bumpy lawn on a slope, and a patio with a couple of pots. We really wanted to get rid of the lawn and replace it with a more biodiverse range of plants and more interesting surfaces. I also took inspiration from the surrounding landscape – we are lucky to back onto a small area of woodland so decided to create a wildlife area at the bottom of the garden to encourage some of the birds and animals to come in from the woods. We have been amazed at some of the visitors we have had since!

We also wanted a more accessible path to the shed and a new seating area where we could sit further into the garden, away from the house and closer to the trees and wildlife. A wooden deck became the central part of the design, once I had decided on the shape and size of that the rest of the design started to come together around it.

Although it is only a couple of metres further into the garden than the patio it feels completely different, and a second seating area is a great way of breaking up the space.

Plants

There are a few things to consider when you are choosing plants – what type of soil do you have, and how much sunlight does your garden get? How much time would you like to spend on maintenance? What colours and textures would you like – think about leaves and foliage as well as flowers.

We have heavy clay with slow drainage, and a mixture of sunlight and shade throughout the day. I wanted plants which are fairly low maintenance, and wanted lots of different foliage with just a few flowering plants. Again I looked at the wider landscape for inspiration, and decided to try and create the feeling of a woodland glade in the dappled shade of the surrounding trees. I chose hardy perennials which tend to live at least 2 years and don’t need much looking after, and limited the colours to purples, white and yellows.

Our planting scheme includes grasses, lavender, heathers, lupin, iris, and a mixture of herbs such as creeping thyme, chamomile, and rosemary.

Instead of having open flower beds which need regular weeding I decided to mulch them with bark – it needs to be quite a thick layer but is very effective at keeping the weeds down and keeping the soil damp in hot weather to save on watering.

For more information on great perennial plants see https://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/grow-plants/20-best-perennial-plants/

Grow Your Own

Our patio isn’t very big, but by filling it with planters and pots we were able to grow numerous vegetables and herbs, and still have space for a table and chairs – just about! It got a bit wild at times, but it was lovely to step outside into out own mini forest, and so exciting to watch things grow and ripen.

I had no experience with growing vegetables, so it was a case of trial and error. We chose courgettes, summer squash, tomatoes, and strawberries. It was great fun to watch them grow and pick our own from right outside the back door. It didn’t all work out but I learnt a lot and really enjoyed doing it.

Making the most of your materials

If you are buying any timber or other building materials it can be quite expensive, especially at the moment. Try to recycle materials where you can, and keep a look out on site like GumTree and Facebook for people giving spare materials away, especially things like bricks and slabs.

If you do need to buy new materials, think carefully about how much you need and how to generate as little waste as possible. I decided that I wanted to build our deck out of scaffold boards, but knew that I would have some leftover, so I used the off-cuts to build a raised bed and a small table for the deck. You always need somewhere to put your cup of tea, or perhaps something stronger.

Upcycling

My neighbour had some old slabs he didn’t want and gave them to us for free. I used those to create an area of hardstanding outside the shed. We simply dug out the existing grass and created a flat area which we covered with sharp sand, and I then ‘dry laid’ the slabs, tapping them down into the sand until they were firm and level.

We had an old BBQ which we didn’t want – we used each half to create a small pond in the wildlife area, and a firepit next to the deck.

I also had a pallet which some of the materials were delivered on, I measured and cut that into sections and screwed it together to create a raised bed. I turned three empty compost bags inside out (to hide the writing) and cut small drainage holes in the bottom. I added a layer of pebbles in the bottom, filled them back up with compost and planted our summer squash plants in them. The whole thing including the plants cost around £30. You could also paint your pallets to make them colourful and fun, it would be a great way to get the kids involved!

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