How to update your garden on a budget

If you want to update your garden on a budget, RHS Hampton Court Flower Show has lots of good ideas.

There are, of course, the top show gardens, where the budget is way over anything you or I could manage.

The fountains at RHS Hampton Court Flower Show – it’s a beautiful setting.

But even those have ideas you can copy without breaking the bank. Here is my pick of the best budget-friendly ideas at this year’s ‘Hampton Court’.

Update your garden with vibrant colour

The Bizzy Lizzie, formerly the most municipal of bedding plants, has had a makeover, courtesy of B&Q.

Blocks of inexpensive bedding plants – the new Busy Lizzies – teamed with large leafed ‘exotic’ plants for a contemporary jungle look.

No-one mourned when it disappeared from the shelves due to a virus. And I wasn’t particularly interested to hear that B&Q had developed a virus-resistant variety, the Imara Bizzy Lizzie.

Bizzy Lizzies teamed with fashionable spikes…

But top marks to the B&Q team for showing what you can do with standard bedding by planting it in big blocks and teaming it with exotic plants.

Resurrect old favourites

Are there other plants you’ve begun to take for granted? Fuschias, for example, or dahlias? The great fun of today’s gardens is that ‘knock your socks off’ seems to be replacing quiet good taste. Go for it. Add a few new varieties of familiar, easy-to-look after plants to add instant zing to your garden.

Dahlia ‘Fashion Monger’ from the National Dahlia Collection’s stand. Is it time to say goodbye to restraint in the garden for a while….?

Fuschias from Roualeyn Fuschias fairground carousel-themed stand.

Make an impact with size

A huge pink tub of matching pink Bizzy Lizzies on the B&Q show garden at RHS Hampton Court.

Fill one large planter and make a statement, rather than planting lots of little ones up. It’s also easier to water, as small pots need watering daily. Big ones hold water better.

These pink Nurgul pots from B&Q cost between £17 and £68.

You could also paint any big plastic pot in a vibrant colour.  Use a specialist plastic primer, such as Rust-oleum Plastic Primer Spray Paint . You can then paint any colour or brand of paint on top.

(Note: links to Amazon are affiliate links, which means I may get a small fee if you buy through them, but it doesn’t affect the price you pay. Other links are not affiliate.)

Paint your fence or shed a stunning colour

There were some wonderful fence and wall colours this year at Hampton Court. This is a look that we could all mimic.

A strong sunshine yellow makes a dramatic backdrop for a courtyard. In the Santa Rita 120 garden.

And duck egg blue is still a garden favourite. From the Community Brain ‘vegetable box’ garden.

Update your garden with a spiky plant (or two)

The jungle look has well and truly arrived, and there were spiky plants everywhere at this year’s RHS Hampton.

You could buy an agave…although it might poke you in the bottom as you bend over to weed.

The Santa Rita 120 ‘Living La Vida’ garden at RHS Hampton Court, complete with agaves, agapanthus and other sculptural planting.

Buy a smaller agave, such as this Agave parryi from Palms-Exotics, and keep it in a pot.

Buy ‘exotics’ that will survive your weather…

The most budget-friendly way of acquiring exotic plants is to choose ones that will survive, so you won’t have to keep replacing them.

The Chusan Palm, or Trachycarpus Fortunei is less prickly and will over-winter in most UK and Northern hemisphere gardens, provided that it is sheltered from winds. Around £10 for a small one from Palms-Exotics.

And you can find cordylines very reasonably in most markets. And they seem to survive anything, judging by the neglected cordylines I see on the streets.

Carex ‘Feather Falls’ is an exotic-looking grass but it will withstand heat and frost, and it grows well in most environments.

If you can be patient, it’s always cheaper to buy smaller and let it grow – but there is the worry that ‘exotic’ may have passed by the time it gets large. Pick fast growers like Carex ‘Feather Falls.’

Pines are back…

Pines used to remind me of my parents’ home in Camberley (Surrey) rather than fashionable exoticism. But they are beautiful sculptural plants that have been over-looked, perhaps because they’re evergreen.

It’s definitely time to add a pine or two – buy them small and keep them in pots. Then you can plant them out – if you like – when they have grown.

Pines in pots are affordable and even spiritual…From Limes Cross Nursery stand.

Anything can make a stunning ‘garden feature’

Don’t take those old kids’ bikes to the tip. Paint them and use them as garden features.

A row of children’s bikes, painted and used to edge a garden at RHS Hampton Court.

The full row of bikes…

I loved the RHS Primary School children’s scarecrow competition.

Buy (or find) extra water butts

One water butt really does not save you money on water. It only lasts about a week into a drought. But I like these four tiers of water butts from the RHS Grow Your Own with Raymond Blanc Gardening School. I’d have lids on the butts in case small mammals fall in, though. You may be able to find old water butts via Freegle (or Freecycle).

Four tiers of water butts at the Raymond Blanc Gardening School at RHS Hampton Court.

This ‘self-watering’ guttering system looks fun. I’m not convinced it’s practical, but let me know if you’ve tried it. Also at the Raymond Blanc Gardening School.

Embrace your inner ‘cottage garden’

The big message from the shows this year – from Ascot Garden Show right through to RHS Chelsea and beyond, is that flowers are really important now.

Echinacea ‘Lelani’ from Hardys Cottage Garden Plants at RHS Hampton Court – echinacea and other cottage garden plants are brilliant for wildlife.

If you want your garden to look contemporary, fill it with flowers. Lots of the same sort, or lots of different ones…it’s hard to get it wrong. Choose flowers that do well for you or try experiments.

Alcea ‘Halo Apricot’ from Daisy’s Roots.

I have a stylish garden designer friend who refers to gardens with a mix of flowers and colours as ‘fruit salad gardens’. It does not sound like a compliment. Not the way she says it, anyway.

But a riot of colour, attracting birds and pollinators, is what gardens are about now.

Ann-marie Powell’s planting for the Countryfile 30th Anniversary garden at Hampton Court.

And if you have to update your garden on a budget, plants can be the most cost-effective way of doing it. Swap, grow from seed or pick up bargains in nurseries and the market.

More ideas from Hampton Court in this video.

It is such a huge show that I could have spent all week there – and still not seen everything.

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How to upcycle and organise the shed

I’ve been meaning to organise the shed for years.

It was cold, messy and full of clutter, with nowhere to put anything. So seeds and tools started to spread around the house.

Before and after – my life has been transformed by adding insulation, artificial turf and lots of storage.

I decided to ask a young artist, William Ford, to use his creativity and ingenuity. William has recently graduated from Bath and I’d been impressed by an exhibition he’d put on here in Faversham with some fellow artists. He’s good at making and recycling. So I hoped he’d be able to reuse and upcycle some of the stuff we have lying around, rather than buying new.

William Ford and one of his installations at a recent exhibition.

Links to Amazon are affiliate links, which means I may get a small fee if you buy. However it won’t affect the price you pay, and all items are also easy to find in your local shops (or you may have them anyway).

Upcycle and organise the shed – the brief

I explained that I wanted to be able to keep seeds and fertilisers in the shed. At the moment, it gets either very hot or very cold. Extremes of temperature aren’t good for seeds.

It was also important to improve the storage. I had a few shelves and some hooks, but it was all pretty chaotic.

William decided that it was important not to have storage jutting out – it’s a small space. So he built shelving out of scaffolding planks and breeze blocks and put them under the potting shelf.

And, finally, I wanted somewhere to shoot garden videos for the Middlesized Garden YouTube channel.

The big window in the potting shed gives a good light. So if we could organise the shed properly, it would be much easier than chasing around the house, constantly having to move the furniture.

And to be absolutely honest, I was rather envious of the allotmenteer YouTubers, who broadcast their videos from charming sheds. These are painted in soft colours, such as duck egg blue (Agents of Field) and hung with bunting and vintage wallpapers (Homegrown.garden and Lavender & Leeks). They brew up tea on camping stoves with old-fashioned kettles that whistle.

It’s all wonderfully atmospheric. But it wouldn’t make sense in a middle-sized garden shed, which usually has a well-equipped kitchen, complete with electric kettle, just a few steps away.

So we felt our potting shed makeover would need a different approach.

William decided to keep the atmosphere as simple as possible, with artificial turf and hanging storage.

Artifical turf on the walls

William says that, at first, he wanted to think up lots of clever ideas. But he decided that when you organise the shed, simplicity has to be the key principle. The shed has to work.

So he had one big decorative idea, which was to use artificial turf on the walls.

The view from my newly upcycled potting shed with its artificial turf walls. The hare was a present from a friend, and we decided he looked rather fun poking his head out of the new ‘green’ walls. I wanted the shed ceiling painted white to improve the light.

The rest of the shed makeover was about creating simple, effective storage for big and small items.

Think about the background for photographs or filming

I wanted to make sure that the artificial turf would be a good background for filming. The colour behind you makes a big difference to skin tone in a video – it can be the difference between looking like a healthy, normal human being or a grim and terrifying ghost.

And if you’re going to be doing photography or Instagram in your shed, then the background and the light will be important.

By coincidence I was going to a WordPress workshop at Dragon Co-working in Chatham (excellent, do go if you are local). Dragon Co-working has artificial turf on its floor, so when no-one was looking, I was able to lie on the floor and sneak a selfie.

To check whether artificial turf would be a good background, I snuck a selfie in on the floor of Dragon Co-working – if you want to use your shed for photography, it’s worth thinking about the light and about the colour of the background.

I also asked William to paint the shed ceiling white, in order to reflect the light better.

Insulating a standard potting shed

I’d asked for insulation. This was quite straightforward. William bought sheets of foil bubble wrap insulation from a DIY store and used a staple gun to fix them to the shed frame.

He also insulated a drawer for me, to give seeds a bit of extra insulation.

William used a bit of leftover insulation material to line the top drawer and also the top of this chest, just to give seeds a little extra protection from extremes of heat and cold.

Because of the size of the potting shed window, and because there is a slight gap below the roof of the potting shed, it will never be fully insulated but it’s definitely less extreme now.

Fixing artificial turf to walls

Artificial turf is quite heavy, so William used three methods to fix it to the walls. Firstly he used double-sided carpet tape all around the edges of each panel of the insulating foil.

Then he used a glue gun, going from left to right and back again, all over the insulation material.

Once the artificial turf was fixed with the glue and carpet tape, he then nailed it to the shed walls to make sure it stays in place.

You can see how he did it in this video below, as well as more footage on how terrible the shed looked at the beginning!

Minimise the budget by recycling what you already have

We wanted to re-use and adapt as much as we could. In the end, the only new materials that William bought were the insulation, the artificial turf, some very short lengths of copper piping and some new S hooks.

He found some concrete breeze blocks in the basement, and acquired some old scaffolding boards. As my main expense was William’s time, I didn’t want him to build shelves. He made shelves by simply putting boards on top of breeze blocks. It’s quick and also flexible – if we need to change the storage we can.

He also found a couple of old wire basket drawers we had bought years ago, probably from IKEA. I haven’t been able to find anything similar online, so perhaps they aren’t made any more. But any chests or drawers that you don’t use would work as well.

Free-standing wire basket drawers and shelves made of breeze blocks and old scaffolding boards, tucked under the potting bench surface. There’s a hanging organiser from Nutscene Twine, although they don’t seem to do these any more.

Organise the shed with hanging storage

Hanging tools on hooks makes them easy to get at and also to put away. William found an iron grid that had been part of a safety cover for a pond.

You need to hang it slightly away from the wall, so that you can get hooks on. William had very short lengths of copper pipe cut, and covered them with

A bit of old safety grid from a pond, secured to the wall with short stubs of copper piping and hung with S hooks – the perfect tool holder.

William started to organise the shed by using pots for lots of different things – these old terracotta pots are used for labels, ties, pencils and a couple of rulers. I bought this ‘shabby chic’ plant pot holder several years ago on a whim, but had never found a place for it before.

Three more hooks on a leftover piece of board add extra hanging space just beside the door. The bright green RHS bag fits in very well, I think.

We’ve just opened our garden for Faversham Open Gardens and Garden Market Day, so we’ve been doing alot of last minute gardening. A friend has been helping me weed, but it’s all been so much easier because everything in the potting shed is easy to see, easy to find, and easy to put away.

See it in video

For a closer-up view of how William organised the shed, see this video. It’s also got how to attach the insulation and the artificial turf.

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from The Middle-Sized Garden https://www.themiddlesizedgarden.co.uk/how-to-upcycle-and-organise-the-shed/

Podcast: Men who stare at orchids

The latest episode of the #wildflowerhour podcast includes an interview with a man who has created a wild orchid haven in his back garden, a look at Orchid Hunter Leif Bersweden’s adventures studying orchids for his PhD, and another one of those lovely readings from Zoe Devlin’s book, Blooming Marvellous.

from #wildflowerhour http://www.wildflowerhour.co.uk/blog/2018/06/24/podcast-men-who-stare-at-orchids/

June spotter sheets

How are your children getting on with our junior section, #HerbologyHunt? Here’s our June spotter sheet – happy hunting!

Click on the image below to download the sheet.

 

from #wildflowerhour http://www.wildflowerhour.co.uk/blog/2018/06/17/june-spotter-sheets/

How to start a successful garden from scratch

Starting a garden from scratch is both a challenge and  a privilege.

When Sarah Langton-Lockton bought her 1920s house, the garden was overgrown to the point of dereliction. It all had to be cleared, except for one camellia and one small tree.

Within two years, it was good enough to open to the public, and now, just three years on, it’s open for the NGS Kent on June 2nd, along with two other local gardens. That’s quite an accolade And it’s been achieved in a remarkably short time.

Sarah created this garden from scratch in not much more than a year or two. Now it’s open both for the NGS on June 2nd and for Faversham Open Gardens on June 24th.

If you’re creating your garden from scratch, you may also be faced with a garden is just a plain lawn, either because it’s newly built or because the previous owners weren’t interested in gardening.

A garden from scratch means you can start at once

When you move into a new home, garden experts always counsel you to wait a year to see what’s in the garden. It’s great advice because trees and shrubs planted years ago can give a garden maturity and texture. If your predecessor was a keen gardener, then you will undoubtedly have some gems that you won’t want to get rid of.

But if it’s clear that nothing is there, you can start immediately.

Although, to be fair, you’ll probably take a year to move in and ‘do’ the house, which is what Sarah did.

What shape is your garden?

Garden planning starts with your garden shape. Is it long and thin, rectangular, square or wide and shallow?

The extra width of Sarah’s plot meant she was able to put the greenhouse on one side, halfway along. It’s serves as a charming focal point as well as for growing.

Sarah was particularly excited about planning the garden, because it was a double width plot. ‘All my life I’ve gardened in long, thin London gardens, so having the extra width was wonderful. But I had to think about how to break up the space differently.’

She decided to have one ‘long border’ on just one side, but to make it deep and generous. She is influenced by Great Dixter, where the Long Border looks good all year round.

‘I wouldn’t compare myself to Great Dixter,’ she says. ‘But I hope there is a Great Dixter-esque feeling about this border.’

One generous border along one side – a tribute to Great Dixter. Even if your garden is long and narrow (especially if it’s long and narrow!), one really good border on one side is better than two meagre ones on both sides. The pink flowers are Thalictrums ‘Black Stockings’, ‘Elin and flavum glaucum.

Break up the space

The way you break up the space in your garden is key to how spacious it looks. My mother always used to think that a room or a garden would look bigger if you had as much open space as possible, especially in the middle.

But, in fact, the opposite is true. When you break up a space, the eye pauses before moving on. It’s more of a journey, so it seems bigger.

And last year, I went on a one day garden design course with the KLC School of Design. The tutor explained that you need to think about mass (ie sheds, trees) and void (lawns, terraces) in your garden before planning which flowers to plant. There’s more about designing your garden in this video.

Three charming veg beds cut across the garden halfway along. Behind them the back of the garden is wilder, with a still-developing rockery at the very back.

Sarah took the brave step of running the vegetable beds across the middle of the lawn. I think this is something of a growing trend, because veg beds are beautiful in themselves.

Don’t you love Sarah’s beautiful plant supports in the veg beds? They’re from Plant Belles.

Once again, if you start a garden from scratch, you can do what you like with your veg – you’re not constrained by where your predecessor has decided to put them.

What materials to use?

You will have to decide between brick, stone, gravel, seashells, lawn etc – and how much of each you want.

‘Lawns aren’t very fashionable these days,’ says Sarah. ‘But I think they are a good foil for plants and flowers, so I wanted open areas with lawn.’

She added a brick path down one side of the garden, to the greenhouse. She has lovely old brick walls, so has used similar style of brick for the path – in small gardens, it’s important not to introduce too many different elements or it can feel fussy.

Sarah has mainly used brick for her hard landscaping, echoing the old brick shed, the traditional green house and the garden walls.

How to choose plants when creating a garden from scratch

Sarah is a great believer in ‘right plant, right place’. So she chooses sun-loving plants for her sunny border and shade-loving plants for the end of the garden.

Many perennials will plump up in just a year or so. And you can fill gaps with annuals.

I love this combination of pale blue (Iris pallida subsp pallida) and dark purple irises in Sarah’s border. Irises often flower in their first year and are a good choice for a new garden. They like a sunny spot.

Sarah’s combination of annuals and perennials meant that the garden looked abundant even in its first year. We opened it for Faversham Open Gardens & Garden Market Day just four months after it was a muddy puddle, and it was picked for the NGS in just two years.

It takes climbers, such as roses and clematis, a bit longer to get established. Sarah’s climbing roses are probably at their best this year. This is Tea Rose ‘Sombreuil’.

Sarah’s garden is uncluttered but there are a few pretty touches, such as this vintage railway petrol container used as a water butt.

You can see Sarah’s garden, as well as Posy Gentles’ garden (which I’ve often written about on this blog) and also 17 Norman Road when they’re open for NGS Kent on June 2nd, 10am-5pm.

Garden maker Posy Gentles’ garden will also be open on June 2nd.

17 Norman Road is also open on June 2nd. All three are walled gardens.

Behind the gates of more private urban gardens:

You’ll find more Kent town gardens for ideas and inspiration in this video:

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Podcast: Plants ARE cool

In the latest #wildflowerhour podcast, Isabel Hardman challenges Dr Jonathan Mitchley of the University of Reading to explain why plants are important and even cool. We also hear a reading from Zoe Devlin’s lovely book, Blooming Marvellous, and find out about why Dom Price from the Species Recovery Trust likes to lie down in fields and stare at ants.

from #wildflowerhour http://www.wildflowerhour.co.uk/blog/2018/05/25/podcast-plants-are-cool/

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018 – what it means for your garden

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show or ‘Chelsea’, as it’s known in the gardening world, is our Fashion Week.

Chris Beardshaw’s design for Morgan Stanley and the NSPCC – just a beautiful garden at every level with abundant planting and a calm but positive use of colour.

The celebs may dip in and out, but the trends percolate down into our gardens – it’s probably more influential than any other show in the world.

I spent yesterday morning at the Chelsea Flower Show as a roving reporter for BBC Radio Kent’s excellent Sunday Gardening programme. Exhibitors were still putting the last minute touches to their stands, and the garden designers were anxiously tweaking their creations.

The BBC Radio Kent Sunday Gardening team, from left: me, Phil Harrison, Jane Streitfeild of the NGS, Steve Bradley and Louise, who kept us all organised.

Designer Laura Anstiss putting the finishing touches on the Supershoes Laced With Hope garden with Frosts.

One of the puzzling things about going round while it’s still being constructed is knowing what’s meant to be in the garden and what isn’t. This ladder does look rather wonderful here. But it disappeared later so presumably not…in the VTB Spirit of Cornwall garden by Charles Stuart Towner.

Then I went round the show again to see what I think is going to be big in ‘ordinary’ gardens over the next few years.

Paul Hervey-Brookes titivating the Viking Cruises Wellness Garden.

All very different at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018

There is a definite wind of change blowing through the gardening world, judging by this year’s RHS Chelsea

The grasses and structured hedging of the past few years has almost completely been swept away.

Instead there are huge beds full of flowers and colour.

The David Harber and Savills Garden by Nic Howard

While I don’t normally want to see graffiti in gardens, I loved this garden for Supershoes Laced With Hope.

Yellow is an emerging garden colour

At Capel Manor College, their display is called 50 Shades of Gold. I spoke to one of their designers who said ‘A few years ago, I’d never have considered using yellow in a garden.’ Their display is a celebration of yellow flowers of all kinds across all seasons.

And I spotted yellow in a number of other gardens, too, including Sarah Price’s garden for Morgan Stanley.

The Trailfinders South African Wine Estate garden, with yellow oilseed rape (!) in the foreground. All our mothers would be scandalised.

Lilac and yellow in the beautifully abundant Hillier ‘Stihl Inspiration’ garden.

Yellow in the gorgeous LG Eco-city garden by Hay-Joung Wang

The free-standing arch

Taking that show gardens are a very pampered version of small town gardens, it’s interesting to see how many feature a free-standing arch. Adding height halfway along a small garden gives it a sense of proportion and gives the eye somewhere to pause, thus making the garden feel larger.

The exquisite ‘Hospitality Garden’ for G-Lion by Kazuyuki Ishihara. Love that moss!

This arch in the Urban Flow Garden by Tony Woods of Gardenclublondon is made of a specially fired porcelain so it doesn’t need any maintenance and lasts forever.

I rather like this arrangement of logs, arch and eucalyptus – sorry, can’t remember who’s it is, let me know if you do.

Corten steel

Beautifully textured corten steel has been around for a few years, but at RHS Chelsea 2018 it is big, big, big.

Water feature with corten steel in the Stihl Inspiration garden for Hillier.

Corten steel screens for Stihl Inspiration, Hillier at RHS Chelsea

Pots of corten steel at Capel Manor College.

More on video:

Pop over to the Middlesized Garden YouTube channel to see more:

If you’ve watched RHS Chelsea 2018 or been to the show, what did you pick up as a trend? What was your favourite garden or new product? Let me know in the comments below or on social media – Twitter is @midsizegarden and Facebook is The Middlesized Garden.

Thank you!

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from The Middle-Sized Garden https://www.themiddlesizedgarden.co.uk/the-rhs-chelsea-flower-show-2018-what-it-means-for-your-garden/