The Ceanothus in the border had grown into a rather strange shape, as it searched for sunlight in this shady spot. There were lots of nice plants within this bed, but our customer was keen to have a clean, fuss free, low maintenance border that they could easily look after themselves.
So, we set to work tackling the Ceanothus stump after cutting it back, and then dug everything up. Some of the plants we kept for our customer’s mother, and the rest were removed, to go to the great compost in the sky.
Whilst digging it over, we also removed a couple of tonnes of soil, as it was banking up quite dramatically towards the wall. We wanted the new border to be in line with the paving on both ends of the garden.
During this process we removed a huge amount of bind weed roots, which is definitely a good job for this garden going forward. Then Joe started to level and rake out the soil, creating the correct depth for the new section of lawn.
We brought in Sarcococca (Christmas box), Daphne, Camillia, Hydrangea ‘Little Lime,’ Pittosporum ‘Tom Thumb,’ and a shade loving David Austin Rose, ‘Silas Marner,’ to plant in the new space. Whilst planting, we added a good quality farmyard soil improver. Joe cut the rest of the lawn with our customer’s push mower, so that it would be in a better condition whilst growing next to the new rolls of turf.
We laid the new section of lawn, and added mulch to the border. Our customer is planning on us laying a whole, new lawn, and edging the full garden with edging cobbles in the future. But for now, this is a good fix for their garden. We are so pleased with the outcome of this border redesign.
