The importance of maintaining a high-end garden

Gardens can bring joy, peace, and delight when they are thriving and well looked after. However, as any gardener knows, it can take just one season of neglect for a garden to go from thriving, to declining and tired-looking. Tangled, woody, bloomless roses, rotting fence panels, gappy hedges, weed-filled driveways, patchy lawns, incongruous planting combinations, and blurry lawn edges rapidly deteriorate the overall appearance and feel of a garden. 

Keep on top of the weeds

Regularity is key to avoiding this decline. Even 30 minutes of weeding and deadheading once a week is more effective than only 1 day, once a month. Weeding is an incredibly therapeutic exercise and helps to keep lawns looking manicured and healthy. For flowerbeds, weeding is not only essential for plant growth but a satisfying activity for a quiet Sunday afternoon.    

A professional garden maintenance team can provide a comprehensive maintenance schedule for existing gardens and go a step further by working with the client to draw up a short – and long-term development plan. When you’re sure of exactly what is required and when garden maintenance becomes almost as joyous as the garden itself. 

Leave the big tasks to the professionals

Knowing an experienced and trained gardening team will be arriving for regular visits takes the stress and worry of garden maintenance away. With all the professional equipment required to expertly manage beds and borders, prune trees, climbers, hedges and topiary as well as upkeep all the hard landscaping and planting, you’ll be allowed to just sit back and simply enjoy your garden.

Having professionals operate any miscellaneous machinery is also better for the client’s safety, as garden maintenance teams are trained to operate tools like trimmers, mowers, chainsaws, and strimmers in a much greater capacity than some clients. A high-end garden shouldn’t just be a project you pick up every now and then. You’ll reap more aesthetic rewards when you put in the time and love your garden deserves. 

Seek advice before making changes

Like many garden owners, clients can get a tad enthusiastic about what plants to include in your garden. Professionals have the necessary knowledge and experience available to them to know which plants will work best on different landscapes and in different environments. In addition, it’s vital to understand the relationship flowers, herbs, grasses, trees and shrubs have with one another. A garden maintenance professional will be able to offer assistance in this regard too. Always seek advice from your team of professionals before introducing something else into your garden. 

Follow a watering schedule

A good, professional garden maintenance team will give clients a watering timetable which will inform them when to water certain areas, how much water to give, and what food or nutrients need to be in the water for specific areas of the garden. 

Watering will, of course, depend on environmental factors such as the weather. With enough rainfall, watering will not be necessary but in severe heat, there may be more watering required. This should be all factored into a maintenance schedule, to give the client to information they need for sufficient watering upkeep.

The trick to having flowers in the garden all-year-round

The aim is to have bulbs in flower for as long as possible, and that really means February to June, with June you’re talking about alliums, but with daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, camassia, crocus and others flowering can be kept going from February through to May. Daffodils and other bulbs are very good for borders because they come up and flower when not much else is around. As their leaves die back and go over, they’re concealed by the perennials and other plants that come up later, which makes for low maintenance as most bulbs can be left in the ground from year to year. Tulips often reduce in size and vigour each year as they don’t like sitting in the wet and are prone to tulip diseases if left in the ground too long – they can be dug up each year after flowering or will need replanting every 3-4 years.

There’s a bulb for everywhere

Bulbs can be used in borders, lawns, pots, containers, woodlands, shady spots, beneath trees, scattered lining paths, and in window boxes. You may have seen them used in formal bedding as a mass of intense colour in a parterre at an old historical garden. These are usually carefully coordinated, high maintenance schemes which are planted out and dug up after they have flowered every year. A looseness can be introduced into these types of bulb designs by deciding on a colour scheme and getting bulbs that flower from February through to May within that colour scheme. Then put them all in a bucket together, throw them about and plant them where they land, so they go in mixed giving a ‘naturalness’, even though very much man-made and formal.

At the other end of the spectrum are the naturalistic drifts of bluebells, snowdrops and daffodils on a woodland floor. Pretty much all daffodils will naturalise, and snowdrops as well. The difficulty with naturalising bulbs in lawns and woodlands is making them look natural. The human eye can see patterns very easily. If you decide to plant your bulbs at random, it just won’t look random – you will finish up doing patterns. Take a handful of bulbs, throw them across the lawn, plant them where they land, and that will give you a natural look.

The ‘bulb lasagne’ is another popular method – in no way edible and nothing like a lasagne, but it refers to the layering of bulbs in the ground or in pots. The basic method is to put larger bulbs at the bottom getting smaller as you go up, so you get a sequence of bulbs emerging in the same spot over time. Pretty much all bulbs grow well in pots. But watch out for heights. For example, if you have a hyacinth which is low, or an allium is very tall then the low plants won’t show over the edge of the pot and the tall ones will get blown over in the wind.

There were some specific measures that we had to undertake on this garden design project, such as:

The context and site location offered both opportunity and constraints. Located close to a golf course, we were able to utilise the borrowed landscape and views through but in order to create screening to prevent overlooking, we proposed a row of mature pleached hornbeams.

The proposed scheme was based on creating a series of spaces through the garden each with their own planting schemes, with a kitchen garden area at the far end of the garden. The colour palette throughout was kept neutral, with the use of shades of green, white, blues and purples. 

For a formal feel close to the house we planted 6 Carpinus betulus ‘Fastigiata’, which were underplanted with Hydrangea aborescens ‘Annabelle’, Agapanthus ‘Jacks Blue’, Anemone x japonica ‘Honorine Jobert’ and Pittosporum tenuifolium pruned into cubes. 

Moving away from the house a series of multi-stemmed birches were planted to stand out against the dark green backdrop of existing evergreen hedging. The planting beds here were broken up with a series of low evergreen hedges of Taxus baccata, Griselinia littoralis and Fagus sylvatica creating planting compartments filled with foxgloves, geraniums and campanulas.  

Around the water feature semi-mature cherry trees – 3 large Prunus ‘Tai-haku’ and 3 Prunus ‘Snow Goose’ were planted for their striking seasonal displays. These were underplanted with an array of perennials including Verbena bonariensis, Gaura lindheimeri ‘Whirling Butterflies’, Sanguisorba officinalis ‘Morning Select’ along with Cornus alba ‘Elegantissima’, chosen for its red winter stems which would harmonise with the western red cedar of the garden building as well as the grass Anemanthele lessoniana. 

Towards the rear of the garden, where the soil is drier, we used plants such as Perovskia ‘Lacey Blue’, cistus and verbascum. 

With a neutral material palette throughout the garden we wanted the water feature to provide contrast. We used black basalt coping stones to finish the water feature. A dark interior, created with the Class B engineering bricks provided a better reflective surface to the water and gave the impression that the central dish was floating on the surface.

While we still think there are some fabulous hardwoods out there for decking which are relatively cost-effective we have, in recent years designed and specified composite decking in various projects. Composite boards are an innovative product that, unlike wood, is anti-slip and resistant to the suns UV light, rain and cold, thereby avoiding the rotting and fading that afflicts wood. Whilst essentially being made out plastic it does have pretty decent environmental credentials as well. It can be easily maintained with just a wash now and again and is used in both residential and commercial applications. There are a number of leading manufacturers and suppliers to choose from but it is considered a premium product and this is often reflected in its price. 

Steel – classic and contemporary 

Over the years, steel has played many different roles in the modern garden. From ornamental sculpture to raised steel edging and weather steel planting beds, there is a multitude of different applications for this hugely durable, versatile and cost-effective material. Weathering steel also referred to as trademarked Cor-ten is a high strength, low alloy, weldable structural steel possessing excellent weathering resistance. The steel produces a protective oxide which essentially seals the surface against future erosion and ensures it is virtually maintenance-free. Again, as with all materials, the context of the site, where and what its intended application is very important in deciding whether this is a suitable material for your project. With an array of finishes and thicknesses available, it will certainly enhance any project when used correctly.