There's nothing a fresh new lick of paint in the garden can't fix right? ...right!??? Let's just say yes or you're ruining my whole blog post!
In today's episode of 'I am not a gardener' we will be exploring the value of colour in your garden. In my humble opinion colour is essential to a successful garden design - whether it's a bountiful floral show, funky bright furniture or just an eye catching feature wall. My garden was really struggling in the colour department, and to be quite frank it looked quite depressing.
Light bulb moment... how about I buy some paint and bring some life into this drab exterior space. I decided to paint the fence at the back of the garden in order to really emphasise the new focal point in my garden ...the rockery. I didn't want to go too crazy with luminous bright colours as I wanted the focus to be on the plants in the rockery, and I essentially just wanted a canvas that would enhance the natural art. Grey is apparently the ideal colour to bring out other colours the most, so I went with a greyish/ blue slate colour paint that would also complement the plum slate already in the garden. I had to construct a makeshift worktop for my paint using an upside down bin which you may recognise from earlier posts #FindTheTable. I applied two layers of paint to the whole fence to make sure the wood was properly sealed and weatherproof, and we were done.
There was a little issue I encountered a couple weeks after finishing the painting. It would seem my paint had dripped onto the other side of the fence, which had prompted my neighbour to paint their side too. I only know this because I went out to find some very large dark terracotta drips of paint on my newly slate painted fence!! You would think now knowing that the paint has a tendency to drip through they would be a bit more careful ...but NO. In order to keep the peace I just went out with a small brush to do some drip conceal work ...MAC would be proud. This experience did however make me look into the rules of fence ownership, and the rules about painting your garden fence. It's something I had literally never thought of, but even putting a trellis up, or garden lights, can be an issue with a shared boundary. The best way to overcome this is to do a courtesy check with your neighbours before you make any amendments, unless you want to be on the latest episode of neighbours from hell (I might already be on there). To finish off I trimmed the grass and reshaped the edge of the lawn using a garden hoe, to make a clear distinction between the rockery and grass.
