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What’s coming up in the garden this week. By Louisa Bell of City and Country Gardens

Design and construction

A job well done
We are having work carried out on the house. It’s really quite odd to be on the ‘other side’ of the work in progress.

Like most people, we sometimes have no idea how much these things cost. The building company broke their quote down in detail and we do the same with our construction quotations. We don’t do estimates, and I wouldn’t accept estimates from the building company either. You need to know what you’re in for right from the start. We all have a few savings or perhaps we’ve re-mortgaged to get some work done. Either way, it’s usually a finite budget for works to be carried out. We had a figure ‘in mind’, and it wasn’t the figure on the quotation. We didn’t know what to do, and I decided to wait and get another quote. The second company were very nice, but somehow they just weren’t as professional. Company A had all of their own trades, and knew the local structural engineer we wanted to use. The building regulation people were high on their list. Company B wanted us to get all the drawings done, and didn’t seem to think we’d need building regulations. They were very friendly and had clearly carried out this kind of work before, but their quotation came through as one sum, without any detail. We realised that the initial quotation was going to be the scary cost for the job.

Company B were less expensive, but we went with Company A. We had to wait for them too, but it has been worth it. The guys working on the house are great. They turn up every day on time, and as each trade is needed, they’ve been here. They have paid attention to detail and have matched all the other features on the house as they have built in walls and doors.

I have always known how important it is to our clients that we offer the whole service. We have every trade working with, or for us. To that end we can carry out every single aspect of a garden construction site. We have chosen each member of our staff very carefully and they are all valued members of our team.

As the builders put the finishing touches to our house, I can stand back and realise how our clients feel as their garden is completed. It’s very exciting.

Plants

A shade better
Plants are getting thin on the ground now. It’s easy in the summer. I’m spoilt for choice, but at this time of year, a newly flowering plant is a little treasure. I planted some hellebores back in the summer. I had forgotten about them really. I needed something to grow underneath our big old conker tree. It’s very shady and dry underneath there. I improved the soil, with bags of farmyard manure, and then planted shade tolerant groups. I put in foxgloves, ferns, trilliums, bergenias, japanese anemones and hellebores. All of them are white flowering varieties, as they will lighten up the dark space. None of them were flowering back in the summer when they were planted and I call this anticipation planting. You have to just imagine and wait – the true joy of gardening. I walked past the hellebores yesterday, and they were all scrunched up like Kleenex, the first white flowers emerging from the ground. I knelt down (all of my jeans have muddy knees) to look closely at these beautiful little white flowers who have been waiting patiently for this time to arrive. All shade-loving plants are a bonus, you don’t expect to see anything much flowering under a big tree. Under my apple tree are tiny white cyclamen (just buy them in pots from the nursery and put them straight in the ground) and they’ll be followed by primroses and then white trilliums. Who said shady sites are tricky?

Things to do

The cold snap
Be prepared for the frosty mornings. We had a couple of frosts last week. Of course, we’re over the Downs and this makes a big difference to the temperature. I have lived most of my life within the sight and sound of the sea and last year, having moved away north (well, six miles north) I had to scrape my car every morning. I didn’t know your fingers could get so cold. The frosts will really affect your garden. Green leaves will go black or brown. Tender things in the garden will succumb to the cold. Some plants, like bizzie lizzies, almost look like their stems are full of water don’t they? It’s no wonder they collapse as soon as it’s cold. Other tender things are used to growing in a hot climate. They grow beautifully in our summer months, but their indigenous state doesn’t resemble our cold winter days. It’s often the damp, rather than the cold, that gets plants in the end. If you have something special, you can wrap it around in hessian or straw to keep out the damp. Don’t walk on the grass during a frost. Your footprint will shatter the frozen grass like a bus shelter’s window and the grass will die.

If you have plants that are tender don’t cut them back too hard now. Leaving a bit of top growth will protect them through the winter months and you can cut them back harder before they start to grow in March as the temperature rises. Keep sweeping up your leaves, especially off the grass. Buy some warm cosy gloves and keep inspecting your garden. Somewhere, under the leaves, there are bulbs and beautiful things just waiting to emerge. Like this weeks hellebore. Little winter stars, making us cry ‘Oh!’…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Gardens. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.