Evolution

If there's one thing that draws me into a gardening blog or website, it's photos that show how a garden has changed and evolved over time. I love to see large areas of gardens, the heights and layers people achieve with planting and the combinations of plants, and then how it all blends into the garden as a whole. Without the aid of a helicopter, photographing mine in one go is impossible, not that it's big of course, but there are obstacles in the way. So I content myself with snapshots of areas, trying to capture the scene from different angles so I can see the changes throughout the seasons and throughout the years. Sometimes, the difference in just a fortnight is startling, and looking back over the years, it's amazing just how much has changed in my garden, and how much back breaking, hard work has gone into it.

There is so much lush green growth at the moment. The spring bulbs have mostly gone now, and the perennials are bursting forth.

You can see Clematis Pixie along the back wall here, climbing up the Pyracantha. It's an evergreen, has the most beautiful flowers and amazing scent. It's a real star in the garden at the moment. It's grown quite quickly in the couple of years since I bought it, and my hope is it will spread out all along this half of the wall.

My borrowed view of Hawthorn from the nature reserve is in full bloom. Soon, my garden will look like a churchyard after a wedding, with hawthorn confetti. 

I'm fine with this though, as it looks incredible and is currently housing a magpie nest. I've been watching the pair fly back and forth over the last few weeks with twigs, patiently building their new house, and hopefully, the eggs may now have been laid.

My bamboo sits in my shady area, along with masses of ferns, hardy geraniums and other perennials that don't appear to mind being kept in the dark for a lot of the day.

It's turned into quite the monster, and every year it just gets bigger and bigger! I adore watching it sway in the wind, it's quite mesmerising. I'm not so fond of the mess the leaves make when they drop though. There's a little work still to do in this area, as builders trampled on and destroyed some plants last year. 

My coldframe, which was on my patio until two years ago, sits against the shed now. Always bursting with pots of this and that, so many in fact, that they end up spilling over onto the garden. My Lilac next to it is in bud now. I'll be growing a climber up it this year, as the trunk is now quite bare. Any recommendations for this shady little corner? Preferably something evergreen that doesn't need pruning and will cover the shed wall too. 

I can hardly believe myself that the whole of the back wall here was covered in Leylandii a few years ago, until I decided enough was enough and had them removed. It made such a difference, as they came right up to the first lamp you can see here on the fence. I had to dig out hundreds of bindweed roots, improve the soil with compost and manure and resist from planting anything for 6 months. Torture I tell you! But it's now starting to pack out nicely. More work to fill in the gaps will commence soon.

Yikes! Were they really that big and ugly!! Good riddance to them!

The space here, in front of the shed is also new, having been planted up just last year. It's coming along rather nicely.

Last year, it looked like this. We had a garage that was falling down taken away. More space to play with :-)

I've put a lot of plants in that mirror those on the right side for a bit of uniformity, but I can never resist going a bit mad with plants that are new to me. Watch this space!

I've tried many things here, behind the shed on the left of the garden, that runs along the fence. It's been a vegetable patch, a jungle of plants and a twee little planting space. None have looked right, so my new plan, that began to evolve last year, was to create a triangular bed to the right (with the obelisk in), add a path immediately to the left of it, then pack this border out with my favourite perennials. 

I made a start last week by adding some young plants, the path will be added later in the year and I'll no doubt be tweaking the area throughout the year.

I hope you've enjoyed the little tour of my garden at the start of May. I'll be adding 'overview' photos of my garden regularly, so that even subtle changes will be remembered. You can compare how it looked on the 11th April by visiting my post HERE.