The Forge gardens

We moved in to the house in late October, the focus was on the house, getting settled and back to work and hosting my mom who was also moving to Wales. And the Welsh rain started. So no real chance to get into the garden. But I’ve got a couple of photos of the back garden and across the stream to the our neighbours woodland garden in all it’s autumn glory.

What’s in it?

A lot. It’s a deceptively big garden. It’s quite mature. It’s also very damp. It rains a lot here. But it’s got a bit of everything. A long hedge, lawn, trees, shrubs, raised beds, sun, partial sun, deep shade, a stream, slopes, birds galore and moles.

It’s still a life’s worth of work and love.

It’s a very winter and spring focussed garden, not something I’m used to.

Lots of trees and mostly shrubbery. I’m not a big shrub person so this is an adjustment I need to make. Some will stay in the long run, but I will change quite a bit over time. I’m more of a flower gardener.

The Hedge

We live on a single track lane that’s in a pretty poor state. A portion of it floods regularly, partly because of the stream and partly because just after us, the lane is vertical and when it rains, it turns into not one, but two streams flowing down.

One side of the garden borders the lane and as such is bordered by a thick hedge. It’s got a great variety of things in it:

• a variegated holly tree
• a standard holly bush
• wild rose
• pyroacantha
• black thorn
• ivy
• and probably beech

The height gets lopped off regularly by one of the local farmers. But it’s been allowed to bulk out into the garden too much. It’s about a foot too thick now and as such has gone quite gappy in places.

One job we’ve started is thinning it out. In some places we can pleach the hedge and in others we’re just having to cut stuff out where it is dead and rotten. We’re getting a sense of where we need to plant in more native species to thicken it out. I’m looking forward to a trip to a nearby garden centre that specialises in local hedge species.

Hedges are so vital to encouraging birds, wildlife and biodiversity. I found this old nest when we were thinning the hedge. Don’t worry, it’s old and abandoned now.

The Back Garden

I was also lucky enough to have some time with the previous owner and get a walk through of what is where in the garden (not that I can remember it now, really must learn to make better notes!). she also left me a bag full of labels of things that have been planted, bulbs, shrubs, perennials, trees. Still working through that to match things up.

What I’ve identified so far:

• Helebores everywhere. EVERYWHERE.
• 2 cotoneaster trees
• mahonia
• a variety of pyrocantha
• roses
• several clematis
• endless ferns
• viburnum
• a small acer
• a Norwegian acer (copper red)
• Osmanthus
• 2x choisya
• grape vines
• raspberry canes
• Sambucus nigra
• forysythia
• Cotinus “Royal Purple”
• Sarcococca
• a number of honeysuckles
• quite a number of cornus

The perennials were pretty much done by the time we moved in, so that will be a surprise. As will be spring bulbs. More on that in the next post…

And a current view of the whole back garden – best I can do through three panes of glass from upstairs. Our land stops at the blue fence.

And a final view of the shade bed in front of the extension to the house.

The evergreen tree on the side of the house is a photinia. One of my least favourite shrubs. Resisting the strong urge to hack it down.

The front garden

The front garden gets the most sun but at the moment has the least growing space (or does it?).

There’s a raised bed as you come in the gate/drive.

There’s little beds dotted along the front of the house. Planning to use these to grow herbs, the kitchen is just inside the big double glass doors. And to grow things up the house. I’ve got about 20 browser tabs open right now trying to find the right colour climbing English rose. Yellow or orange.

And then there is this beauty. Ngl, this tree is one of the many reasons I fell in love with this house. It’s a very mature ornamental cherry. Double pink blossoms. Literally the ornamental tree of my dreams. To say I’m excited for spring is an understatement.

There’s a couple of other smaller raised beds towards the back wall and on the side facing the house.

The bed under the tree has daffodils or snowdrops or something coming up. But a lot of what appears to be nothing so I’m thinking a big bed of Lily of the Valley.

You can also see the cooping wheel in this photo.

“Down below”

You can see a gap in the stone wall just the back right corner of the photo above. This is one of the ways down to the “lower garden”. Not sure what else to call it. And not sure what to do with it.

A big section is fallow right now. Bamboo. Neighbours. Enough said. Looking forward to the work being done to take it out so we can do something with that area.

Then things run across the stream, between the studio and the stream. Lots of willow, lots more shrubs. And SLOPE.

After the studio, there’s a stone path that runs back up another slope to the main garden/lawn area (see back garden).

At the back of the back garden, if you walk as if to go out the back gate, you’ll see another stone back that leads down towards the stream and an area that’s been sort of terraced but needs a lot of work. The boards holding the slope are rotting. There’s some bramble. There’s a lot of old tree stumps. It’s very shady and wet.

I have half formed thoughts in my head of levelling things out a little bit and making a lovely sitting area down near the stream in the shade for those now too normal baking hot days we have in summer.

Oh and there is a huge sedum roof on the studio that counts too.

The Stream

Have I mentioned the stream? Yes, we have a stream (well part of a stream) that forms another border to our house/land.

We had two sets of neighbours over at Christmas. I was hearing about a kingfisher sighting. Eels and a fish spotting as well. But the stream isn’t the healthiest at the moment.

It’s a year round stream and turns red in the rain when soil leaches down from farmers fields further upstream. There’s some very bad land management going on up there….

So it’s full of silt.

It’s eroding the banks on our side quite badly in a few places. But the joy of having a father-in-law who is a hydrologist… He has plans for how we can better manage the flow, widen it, slow it down in places. We’re going to have to shore up the banks in a few places.

Ann