Gogglebox's Garden Blog:Year Three

[GoggleboxUK]

Thought I'd start a garden blog, somewhere to track progress over time.

Here's a Google satellite view of my garden before I started ripping out all the trees and flattening it for the block paving:



and 3 from Goggle street view looking at my garden from the outside:







Unfortunately all the pics I took of the process when I started in June 2010 were lost

First Pics - March 2011:

The bed of doom....



Cordys after winter battering....



The other 2 Cordys, laid waste by the -19c....



The Palms....



Damage....





Signs of Spring....



New arrivals....



New bed waiting to be planted....



The other new bed and new arrivals....



New arrival: Fatsia Japonica....



The overview....

[The Codfather]

Where are they then....

[jezza]

No pics chap

[Simba]

Are you drawing your pics by hand...??
C'mon mate, get a wriggle on.....

[GoggleboxUK]

Sorry guys, I tried using the Add file feature rather than using Imageshack and that's what I got.

Edited it now so all your comments will look rather out of place.



Ya live and learn eh?

[kata]

Why is that man been decapitated?

Why is a palm in a strawberry pot?

Have you no bin store?

Best pic is the last pic.

[GoggleboxUK]

The man is a wall planter waiting for my new bamboo corner. There's a decapitated woman somewhere as well.

No, unfortunately no bin store yet but to be honest I don't really need to buy any more bins.

I'd run out of cash last year so the palms just went in what was available at the time. They are all going in the ground this year so that area should look much better.

It's all a bit of a mess at the moment but, with my growing room, bamboo corner and a load of new gardy plants going in very soon, I'm hoping it will look much better in time.

[kata]

I like the paving.......does that help

Its hard work Goggle. Today I did a little digging to widen the borders...not much.

We have all summer.

[GoggleboxUK]

Cheers Kata, the paving is a constant but the rest is subject to change.

When I see other members photos on here I have to keep telling myself that mine is only 9 months old and only just learning to crawl. It's all trial and error and so far there's been a lot of error and a bit of trying.

When it grows up it wants to be Arlon's garden.

[Tropical Bob]

Good to take pictures, come summertime it will look lots greener!

ps whats your brown bin for? we only have green (garden) , blue (cardboard and plastics) and grey (everything else )

[GoggleboxUK]

We have brown garden waste bins rather than green ones here Bob, most likely because that's the colour most peoples gardens are most of the time.

[Arlon Tishmarsh]

When it grows up it wants to be Arlon's garden.

When i grow up i wanna be sensible and when i die i'd like to come back as Cheryl Coles brazierre

Its looking good GBUK. With all that paving it would make a terrific mediterranean courtyard type garden. Loads of terracotta pots , bright colours. Mines barely 12 months old and still got loads to do, i doubt gardens ever get finished really.

[kata]

Black bin for household waste

Green bin for recycle garden etc.

Brown bin for glass, cartons (not food) bottles from pop, milk, Fab conditioner etc.

Here they are very strict on recycle.

black bin every week, newspapers, green and brown bin two weekly.

[GoggleboxUK]

When it grows up it wants to be Arlon's garden.

When i grow up i wanna be sensible and when i die i'd like to come back as Cheryl Coles brazierre

Its looking good GBUK. With all that paving it would make a terrific mediterranean courtyard type garden. Loads of terracotta pots , bright colours. Mines barely 12 months old and still got loads to do, i doubt gardens ever get finished really.

If you want to be surrounded by t**s all day you could come back as a politician

I wanted a Mediterreanean color scheme for the stone and my long term plan is to create a staggered border using terracotta pots all down the right side of the garden. Stage one is training my 2 kiwi vines to cover the fence then I'll have 3 rows of large, medium and small plants in pots from the fence coming into the garden.

I want a full, jungly effect on the other side with a 6-7 ft height. In years to come the Trachycarpus will look great in the middle of it all.

At the back I'm uderplanting conifers with bamboo, other tress (Paulownia & Sumach) and smaller shrubs to create a bushy but colourful look.

I'm going to add in some ornamental grasses and trailing plants and try to artificially weather the edges of the paving with grass between the gaps to eventually give a Tomb Raider-esque'lost kingdom' type feel.

I've just been reading that Musa Basjoo is totally root hardy and will produce 6ft stems each season then die back to the ground without protection in winter. If that's really true and they will keep coming back then I'll have to get some of those.

[Arlon Tishmarsh]

If you want to be surrounded by t**s all day you could come back as a politician

Love it

It all sounds very interesting, look forward to seeing more pics as it develops