The Charming Nook

Hello and welcome back to my blog!

Today’s post introduces one of our front gardens. The front gardens wrap around the front of our property. The Mr and I have made some major progress in these gardens since the beginning of 2023, finishing off some major planting recently, which spans all the way across two areas.

One of those areas is The Woodland Garden. I hope you enjoy reading this post to see how The Woodland Garden has developed since February 2023!

For clarity, the front gardens are split into three mains sections, which I have named:

• The Welcome Patch;
• The Cherry Tree Avenue;
• The Woodland Garden.

There will be further posts very soon introducing The Welcome Patch and The Cherry Tree Avenue; stay tuned to read and see more!

FYI, this post is a longer one – you may like to grab a cup of tea or coffee before you start reading.

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The Woodland Garden

The first part of the front gardens that we set to work on at the beginning of 2023 was The Woodland Garden.

This part of the garden sits in full sun on the corner and as you move further up the garden, it transitions to the most shaded garden on our land. It does not sit in full shade though; The Woodland Garden receives sunshine in almost every part of it at different times of the day and at different times of year, depending on the height of the sun in the sky. With these differing light conditions, it offers a great opportunity for experimenting with and growing some shade-loving plants.

Whilst some people may look at a shaded spot as a problem in their garden, I don’t believe that to be the case at all! There are so many fantastic plants you can grow in shaded conditions and it encourages you to be creative with planting by using contrasting foliage textures and shapes. You also have to consider what colours are best to use in a shaded garden, depending on what effect you want to create.

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Part one: fair-well to the shrub!

February 2023

This garden originally comprised a scrappy piece of grass on the corner, growing up to an overgrown, large shrub at the top of the garden:

The Mr and I originally tried to give the shrub a generous cut back, but it was far too large. Whilst (trying) to trim it back, I also discovered that it was rotting at its base and it had some disease in its main trunk.

Trying to trim it back was also difficult and slightly dangerous too, as there is quite a slope from the pavement down the garden. I also noticed that because this shrub was North to North-West facing and therefore situated at the coldest part of our property, its size was reducing airflow around the property and both of those factors combined were causing mildew and moss to grow on the paving slabs and on that side of the property.

Due to all of the reasons above, I decided that unfortunately there was no choice but for the shrub to be chopped down!

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The Mr and his relatives set to work with a chainsaw and various pieces of garden equipment to remove the shrub. This appeared to cause somewhat of a surprise to some villagers, who commented in passing on how nice the fragrance of it had been when in flower!

The chainsaw and loppers made light work of chopping down the shrub.

The Mr and I then made a start on digging up the huge root system:

Our farmer neighbour across the road ended up lending us his axe when he must have seen us struggling in vain with a pair of garden forks 🙂

Eventually, the root ball gave in:

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I later spoke to some villagers whilst I was working out in The Woodland Garden and they understood that I had a different vision for the garden than what had been there before, and that the shrub had been on its way out due to disease in any event. This appeared to alleviate any concerns since our initial chainsaw massacre of the shrub, particularly as the gardens have taken shape since 2023. Sweetening villagers with free plants also works well 😀 Or perhaps we scared them away once they saw us wielding the axe? I couldn’t say for sure.

Removing the shrub completely opened up the space and offered some great new space to experiment with plants. Before I could put in any other planting, however, I had to remove all of the grass, which was being used by some as a dog toilet unfortunately!

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Part two: digging up the grass

April 2023

In April 2023, I set to work digging up all of the grass. I worked steadily in sections:

I dug up all of the grass by hand with a spade in square chunks and I stored it in layers in spare builder sacks to decompose. If grass is left like this, it becomes a wonderful loamy texture soil, that you can use as top soil around your garden.

I initially stored both bags of the grass sod on the concrete pad, where I built my greenhouse last year, as per this post: A new greenhouse Both bags were later moved to a spare corner of the garden to be stored for later use.

On a side note, if you have a similar piece of land covered in grass, you may choose to take the easier route and cover it with a thick layer of brown cardboard, followed by bark chip mulch.

After a few seasons, the cardboard will completely kill off any grass and weeds (apart from some perennial weeds, which you may need to dig out). This method ensures that the nutrients within the grass and the weeds actually go back into the soil.

I used this technique in The Fruit Cage garden, where I also put down a generous layer of shredded paper before the brown cardboard:

The above resulted in a really easy and low maintenance technique to clear a grassy area for planting. You can read more about that here: A new fruit cage and introducing a new area of the garden…

I chose not to do the above for The Woodland Garden because I wanted to immediately begin planting after digging it out.

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I have since used up one bag of the loamy soil to grow cherry tomatoes in (post here: Growing cherry tomatoes outside in grow bags) and across the garden. It is brilliant soil and has so many worms and insects in it. The second bag is currently sitting in the garden waiting to be used in some future raised beds in the near future 🙂

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Laying the bark mulch

You’ll notice from the photos that the Mr and I also installed a temporary fence line of stakes and netting to prevent the garden being used by dogs.

After all of the digging, the garden was mulched with a generous layer of bark chips, to retain moisture and suppress weeds.

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Part three: the bloom of 2023 and beyond

May 2023

Once I removed all of the grass, I planted out a mixture of perennials in The Woodland Garden. I started off with a small patch of ferns and pink astilbe in the part of the garden that becomes more shaded:

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July 2023

In July 2023, I then planted out a mixture of perennials, many of which I had either grown from seed or seedlings:

I recall this planting day well, because the wind suddenly blasted the garden the following day and I worried about my young plants! Fortunately, they all faired well.

You’ll note that this is a broad mixture of planting and not typically ‘woodland’ planting per say. This is of course correct, though I adapted my planting to what I had on hand, as well as adapting the plants to suit the sunny conditions on the corner. The garden becomes much more shaded as you move towards the back wall, and therefore more ‘woodland’ like. I will be editing the planting as time moves on, but I like that the mixture is very beneficial to the local wildlife.

After planting in 2023 and throughout 2024, I largely left the plants to get on and grow, with only some minor weeding and tending every few months at the most.

The perennial planting included a mixture of geums, verbena, achillea, foxgloves, rudbeckia and salvia. In July, the pink astilbe (one of my favourite plants) started to come into bloom:

The foxgloves also gave a sneak-peek into the flower spikes that would soon bloom for all the bees and pollinators:

August 2023

Time moved on and the first real dance of the garden happened in August 2023:

At that time, the rudbeckia, verbena, salvia, foxgloves and astilbe were all flowering:

September 2023

By September 2023, the garden was starting to wind down, but the achillea and verbena still continued flowering:

October 2023

The border still kept going into October 2023:

December 2023

By December 2023, the first of the frosts arrived:

I then pretty much left The Woodland Garden alone until the following Spring in 2024:

April 2024

In April 2024, the pathway had become overgrown with weeds (again) and I decided it was time to get it weeded and regrouted for good this year:

June 2024

June in 2024 saw the planting mature further and bloom into life for months on end:

August 2024

It wasn’t until the drier spells in August 2024 that some areas of the border started wearing on, which caused the leucanthemum to droop and fade slightly:

Curiously, some patches of the leucanthemum faired better in the Summer drought of 2024:

You’ll also note from the photos above that I removed the plastic stake and net fencing from the edge. I instead installed a much smaller black fence barrier, now that the planting had matured.

Looking back at the photos of The Woodland Garden from August 2024 shows just how much all the planting matured over the last year when comparing it to the previous August in 2023.

November and December 2024

In November 2024, we received a large delivery of plants, which I hinted at in a previous post:

December 2024 therefore saw a generous plant out of evergreen hedging, bordering the edge of The Woodland Garden:

The hedging is oleaster ebbingei (known as silverberry). It is a very robust plant, tolerating the cold, wind and drought. It also produces berries that can be harvested or left for the wildlife.

I am in love with how well the hedging outlines the garden. It also solves the issue of any dogs using the garden as a dog toilet and it will look good all year round.

I am starting to build the structural layers of the garden now that the main hard work is over and I can start to finesse my design plans. I have left space for the hedging (both the larger evergreen hedging and the lavender hedging in front, pictured below) to mature to their full size.

The two plastic stakes placed in the gaps along the hedge line (pictured above) were placed there to visualise additional plants. The additional four stakes in the top right of the garden were also being used to mark out an area of change… I will be sharing an update on both of those points very soon 🙂

You’ll also notice that I had to dig up and relocate some of the perennials to allow space for the line of hedging. I was accompanied in this task by the robin that likes visiting our gardens whilst I work:

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I have further major plans for this area of the garden that I am going to start work on in about a week or so, once the freezing weather has passed.

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Summary

Before and after: from February 2023 to December 2024

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I hope you enjoyed seeing how much The Woodland Garden has changed since the beginning of 2023. I love looking back through the old photos and seeing how much has developed. Sometimes, it is easy to forget just how much you have done.

I am really looking forward to getting started with further plans for the area! Ensure you subscribe to my blog to receive further updates.

Until next time, happy gardening 🙂