Our garden at Watersfield
Since 2009 Tim and I have slowly been turning a bare field surrounding our home into a garden.
It's strange when you look back at a picture and stare at the blank canvas that we started with. When people visit our garden they often ask did I have a plan to start with and I always make them laugh when I say that I just make it up as I go along. Gardening is quite an individual thing, everyone has their own personal taste. This should be reflected in the design, rather than a garden just being about a fashion statement of the time. There is no right or wrong when it comes to doing your own garden its just about doing what makes you happy. The only rule you do need to follow is selecting the right plants for the right place. If you do that you can create your own little paradise.
In the beginning we planted over 2000 hornbeam hedging plants in a double row all the way along the outside boundaries of the garden and two hedges by the house to split the garden into separate areas at the front and side.
The Front Garden - This was a starting point to help us focus on just the smaller front garden. We used edging boards to mark out the borders and to create a level for us to work with. We double dug and added a fair amount of rotted horse manure to the thick heavy clay soil and left the ground to break up in the frost through the winter before raking level and planting with a mix of shrubs, perennials, a couple of trees and annuals for the first year. Over time the plants in the borders have grown with a few changes taking place and some plants have been moved to other areas of the garden. A few new additions have been added along the way to bring in flower for late autumn.
The Spring Garden - With the parking for the house on one side and several large oak trees growing along the other edge, the side garden became a wide strip of land. We saved topsoil from our building work to raise the planting depth under the tree canopy. In this area we have taken advantage of the shade the trees provide and have planted many plants that we are not able to grow in other parts of the garden. Having a bark pathway winding its way through this narrow garden creates a very natural feel, enhanced with old tree stumps and ferns that just blur into the background as the summer continues. The trees and shrubs in this garden have been chosen with the wildlife in mind providing early flower for insects and berries and fruit for the birds in autumn. The stumps provide homes for insects, spiders and reptiles, even slow worms. I know they are legless lizards, but I still run a mile with my phobia of snakes, much to Tim's amusement. We have under planted with spring bulbs throughout this garden (hence the name), but it still looks just as nice in the autumn when the leaves change colour. 
The Vegetable Garden - Walking from the spring garden through a gap in the hedge, you enter the veg garden which sometimes can double up as an overflow area for nursery stock. Here we have used sleepers to raise the soil level using plenty of organic matter mixed with top soil from the garden. Before the hedges grew you could see this garden from the house but now they have become dense and tall. It feels very enclosed and protected.
Over the years this area has developed with the addition of greenhouses and sheds. I use the greenhouses mainly to protect plants from the garden that are not hardy enough to sit outside through the cold winter months.
The open fronted shed is known as the Shabby Shed and here I do any potting I need for the garden. It also houses lots of old sentimental junk full of memories. Many items are worthless family belongings which we can't bear to throw away. We hate the thought of just leaving them in a box out of sight, so we have decided to display them on the walls instead.
The White Garden - In 2010 we made a start on the expanse of grass at the back of the house. We started by adding a garden room to house the nursery's office which then required a path to get to it. We used a flexible metal strip to create the circular centre bed and surrounding curved beds. The pathway was topped of with a layer of decorative gravel and annuals were planted in the beds for the first year as a temporary fix while the ground settled.
The following autumn a hornbeam hedge was also planted along the path edge separating it from the rest of the field and the borders were planted with a mix of perennials, roses and a couple of shrubs all of which have white flowers. In the centre border we have planted a dwarf weeping white mulberry tree. As time has passed the office has been revamped with a colour change plus a new roof. The gravel path has been up-graded to brick.
The Hot Borders - The back of the house was very open and exposed. So, in 2011 we decided to plant another internal hedge for protection. We also created a long lawn area with two borders on one side, split with a grass pathway opening to a wide circle at the cross point that led back to the white garden.
I love yellow flowers, especially when mixed with orange and red flowers. They are planted in the large borders so that we can look out on them from the house.
In 2016 Tim hired a turf stripper and removed the grass from the pathway and replaced it with a gravel path so we could access the garden through the wet winter months. He also added a small brick path through to the lawn for that extra added detail.
The Tropical Garden - At the side of the house we had an area under the oak trees sandwiched between the spring garden and the white garden which wasn't really being used . After watching a tv program about tropical gardens we were inspired to create a little paradise of our own with a tropical feel.
We built a number of raised beds to create different planting heights and used steps going up and down these beds to give the illusion of a level change to a flat garden. To start with we planted four different types of bamboo, two different hardy palms, one large Fatsia japonica, some hardy garden ferns and my first tree fern that I named Fergus. We used bricks for paving on the steps and stone slabs for the rest of the area.
The collection of tropical type plants continues to evolve and now includes bananas, cannas and gingers, with the display changing slightly each year.
Continuing out through the tropical garden at the side of the office room, the small circular garden we have created is known to Tim and I as the washing line garden as that is what it used for. This garden and its name are still a work in progress. From here we have dug a path that leads down to the bottom end of the garden, cutting through the middle of a large border and arriving at our bespoke garden room.
The Garden Room - In 2018 we built a bespoke garden room as a centre piece to what we hope will be our future entertaining garden where we can go to sit, eat and drink with our friends.
We designed it together over a coffee whilst looking at pictures of other garden rooms, both of us picking out features that we liked. Tim helped a very talented friend to build this glamorous garden shed. Even though we cannot see on top of the roof we have still added a living roof of sedums to provide something different for the wildlife rather than just a barren empty roof space. The outside lighting is channelled into the timber giving a very sleek appearance. The garden in front of this room is still to be done but we are planning to plant softer colours that will glow in the evening light.
From the garden room the path leads back to the Hot Borders and the house once again completing the tour of our garden.