As we get closer to the end of the first year of my gardening journey in 2014, I figured it's important that you guys get to see what it is I am building towards. For those of you that do not know yet or may not realise that I originally come from an art and design background. This love of gardening was spawned from a desire to create something from nothing whether it be a blank canvas or an empty flower bed. So it was only natural that my design skills crossed over into designing this 'blank canvas' exterior space called my garden.
The goal was initially just to give my garden some overdue love but I figured that if this was going to be successful I needed a plan. The first image here gives you a birds eye view of the initial plan for my back garden as drawn up in 2014.
To help you understand the design idea further the top is the back of the garden, while the bottom is connected to the house. The purple areas are where I planned to put down some plum slate as shown in one of the images below. I don't know why but I have seen plum slate in several outdoor spaces and just love how it looks when used correctly. The black circle is the seating area with matching table and parasol. Either side of the garden in brown, you have on one side the flower bed and you will find the vegetable plot over on the left. This is where they both used to be years ago but they both descended in to a bramble/long grass mess. I also had plans to have some sort of arbour/ arched seating area underneath the tree to have somewhere shaded to relax. This would also have twin scented plants either side to make the area stoke the sense of smell while enjoying the view of the garden. Slightly less exciting the dark grey rectangle is the built in shed and the green is obviously the lawn area.
It's weird because I literally found myself staring at every garden that I walked past for inspiration and if I found something new I couldn't wait to incorporate that idea. I still do that to this day in fact. All the images or gardens I saw inspired me to want to do something more or create unique elements in the garden design. So all the images below were just a handful of the gardens that inspire what I am working towards. Sites like www.houzz.co.uk really helped with nailing down a theme and this is why the present day layout of the garden evolved into a much more accomplished exterior space to navigate. As the timeline of my journey moves on I will give you a more up to date presentation of how the design roots of my garden grow.
