I,too, see my back fence from my kitchen door. I am developing layers of plantings such as patio containers and plantings around the patio to divert the eye. The tips you gave have helped me solidify my goal. Thank you!
Great video. Gave me lots of ideas. And thankyou for being real regarding budgets. Must of us don’t have unlimited budgets and like you say we will need to take our time and create gradually over time as we can save money. Enjoyed watching 😊
You're looking beautiful today. Like your perfect hair style. Thanks for the garden videos. You're my favorite . Learning and changing my English cottage garden..To the point and helpful. From Oregon in USA
Thank you Madame🌺 We often make our own structures for much less and poor concrete to make our own things. Go to neighbors about town and ask!!! People are very generous. I go to tag sales and scoop up wonderful things for next to nothing Recently we built a courtyard with used bricks from the brickyard.....it was free. I also built a wishing well from recycled bricks...... don't wait ten years for anything 😮
Great tips, Alexandra! Hope you had a wonderful Christmas holiday. Painting or staining small focal area(s) is an economical way to add dimension to your garden. For example, staining wooden raised bed boards black, painting a wall trellis a bold colour or spray painting multiple pots the same colour and concentrate that group(scattering the height) with complimentary coloured flowers and foliage. For less than $50, paint and/or stain can do wonders for design.
Your garden is looking great, Alexandra, yet I feel like the far wall of the parterre is a little abrupt and would love to see you add some plants along the top edge, especially some that spill over the ledge 💚
The idea of formal and simplified design close to our very modern home is the right way for us. Your specific ideas and visual aids were really helpful. By the way, the colors your’e wearing in this video are super flattering. Do you have these colors in your garden? We choose the colors in our home by what we like, but also by what’s flattering to our skin tones. Wondering if this might be wise in garden rooms where we sit or entertain. Thoughts?
What a great thought and thank you. I don't reflect the colours of my clothes in the garden consciously, but I imagine there is some unconscious influence, because if, for example, someone loves wearing pink, they probably choose pink flowers too.
This has been my decor and gardening colour practice for years!! I don't follow colour trends. I choose decor based on the colours that suit my skin tone, and when I started gardening, I chose the garden pallet to match! It helps narrow the field and makes it so much easier to make choices. And it stops one being blown about as colour trends come and go.
You are so brave to completely revamp such an integral part of the garden, going from beautiful softness of the mature lavender to this imposing white structure that is beautiful but yet an attention hog. I would be so scared to make such a huge change!
Happy New Year of gardening, Alexandra. Thank you for this video. After the snow storm last night that left almost a foot of snow on the ground I was excited to start thinking about the spring and gardening 👩🌾 😊🍀
Thank you Alexandra for another comprehensive and full of good advices video. It’s like a good reference book which I’ll be dipping in again and again. 👍
Great video. Very educational and so useful for all gardeners. Your pergola is very decorative, but looks more like a gazebo than a pergola to me. I always thought gazebos were long structures with climbers either side on each opposite post. Is it that gazebos are sat in, with maybe a table to have tea in? Thank you. Happy gardening 😃
I think there's quite a debate about this one, and that different people have different definitions (and I'm sure it's different again around the world), but I've decided to go along with 'a pergola doesn't have permanent shelter (ie a roof) and a gazebo has permanent shade or shelter because it has a roof'.
Happy New Year! I love your channel and it’s given me the confidence to make some quite radical changes to my full summer sun, but deep winter shady, overlooked, small terraced garden; that has by-and-large paid off! This year I’ll be saving up for some pleached hornbeams and a rowan tree, for the birds and for privacy. If I had any advice to the new gardener it would be, don’t rush things. Experiment. Don’t beat yourself up if you make mistakes. Pay close attention to how the sun moves about your garden throughout the year. Don’t be too quick to stick in a tree for summer shade. You might hate the heat in the summer, but in the winter, it might be the only patch of your garden that stays sunny.
Those Alliums are gorgeous. I wish I could get them to grow. I've tried and tried. Unfortunately I think that for me, they are one of those plants I'm just jinxed with. There are several plants I'm jinxed with. Usually my problem is it's plants that can't take too much water. Avid overwaterer here in the hottest and driest city in the world. Adelaide South Australia. I found it quite interesting seeing the before and afters, especially the premier photo as I don't ever remember seeing that.
Funnily enough, you're not the first person to say they have trouble with alliums. I haven't got to the bottom of what it might be, though, as alliums seem to spread in my garden.
I'm hoping this is the year we paint our back fence dark grey or black, as I've seen recommended on your channel. Our fence is very visible from the back door, though I've got some plantings ro screen it a bit. Thanks for the ideas!
You may already have seen this, but if not, it's a good example of a black fence in a garden where the back fence is very visible from the the back door. th-cam.com/video/AYWpiVp-pzE/w-d-xo.html Thank you!
Pleased that your good work here is appreciated and recognized by TH-cam. I don't know who advised that you put a big mass like that pergola closer to the house, but they were mistaken. The par Terre area low and the focal point, for example the pergola will look better on the big lawn, perhaps in the center or more to the right. A low above or in-ground basin with a modest jet of water would be beautiful where you presently have the pergola. It would draw people to it if only to splash the water, to sit on the edge, and listen. You don't make many mistakes and indeed if you are happy this is not a mistake. The pergola in the center of the big lawn, coved in wisteria, clematis, trumpet plants, whatever would draw admirers to it. All the best. I am presently being a bad ecologist and pump water from my well and spraying water around my palm and fig trees to provide them some warmth. The water simply goes back to the well, but the electric pump is a small sin.
@@TheMiddlesizedGardenOne half to two meters. I have one large modern waterfall that I invented, one fountain that is 80 cm diameter, one 40 made from a rounded ceramic planter, and one oblong two meters by 50 centimeter. If the water reaches close to the rim or there is a perch, then the birds and dragonflies will drink from it.
Good afternoon Alexander, Gardens, gardens ... it is a never ending story!! I was thinking one day, I wished I had not bought any plants at the Nursery when we moved into our first house, still is the same place. I thought, we should have just kept the grass, waited a year or even two, go out window shopping at other established gardens, nurseries and garden exhibitions. Then, actually take a camera with and snap plants, trees and ornaments. Come home and start to analyse and decide from there what to do. I wonder if it would have helped me to be more successful and not have wasted money on unsuitable plants. What do you think Alexander? I am sure when so young and eager we miss the plot of gardening completely. Quite some time ago I had a sincere interest in Orchids. Did I mess those gorgeous plants up, I killed them all!! I did that through total ignorance, I joined a orchid club but they kept "all the growing and feeding" rituals to themselves. They is not share a thing. Now with the internet there are so many hints and tips on growing those beauties, and so many lovely people out there showing their plants, not just orchids, and they are so willing to share their experiences with any person that is willing to take note, like yourself for instance. We have neighbours in our area, in their back garden just grass, do not know what is infront of their home, storms come and go, they neve worry about their lawns, there you go, is that a solution or merely an option. Oh by the way, I have bought some orchid plants again, and hopefully they will thrive and I will be successful this time. I did hit panic stations when I brought them home, but I thought, you have all the information on-line, do not be fearful. What a challenge awaits me. Actually I needed a challenge in my life, and for me this will be something major. Thank you for good garden talk and advice as always, looking great in a bit of 'orange'. Many blessings.
Is there a distance where any tree will be too close to the house? I suppose you might say it depends. But, I bet there is a some ground rule in the minds of most garden designers. What would they say if they were asked?
Yes - 3/4 of the final height of the tree gives you the minimum distance from the house so a tree that grows to 30ft should be planted about 20ft away (rough figures)
I'm looking at a tree I planted about 12 feet from the house when it was 30 cm. Now it is 30 feet and it would be much better if it were 8 ft further. And, the branches wouldn't be coming up against the eves. Good advice, many thanks. @@TheMiddlesizedGarden
Really great tips and ideas. Unfortunately my garden is above my cottage and accessed by a bridge so visually the cottage and garden don't interact. It's a real shame as we have a lovely old stone cottage which would look wonderful in conjunction with our cottage style garden
Hi thank you for the wonderful video, can you please tell me where is this red brick path with the square design,the path goes through the middle of a flower border, it is at 5.34 min. Thank you
I agree, you look very smart in the colors you chose to wear and I appreciate your advice. I look out onto my newly planted garden from my kitchen but at the back of it is my neighbor’s 6 foot fence that I would rather not see. I am trying to grow tall plants in the back of my border to cover it, since it is against the law for me to paint it or attach a trellis to it. Unfortunately, he planted Leland cypress on the other side only 4 feet from his fence so in a few years I will have a green wall and very dry soil and limited sun. I am pruning the branches as they come over the fence line to create a hedge. My concern is that plants won’t flourish under the Leland. Any advice?
If the trees are taking the moisture and nutrition from the soil, then you could consider raised beds along your boundary. If you live in the UK, there are regulations as to how high a Leylandii hedge can be. If you're pruning the branches back to the boundary line, your plants won't be 'under' the Leylandii branches, and if your border faces South, East or North, you should still get a reasonable amount of sun.
I now remember you talking about raised beds in a video. I hadn’t thought about that for this situation but I may consider doing that in sections where the plants are failing. Splendid idea! Thank you! I will check the regulations in the US for a height limit, but I don’t think it is a requirement in our neck of the woods. I love my north facing borders and will make the best of them as the neighbor’s tree line rockets up.
At the moment, the second video is the ideas for 'difficult shady corner' as it covers some of the same territory and I haven't finished editing the main number 2 video, as I've had a couple of technical issues. I'm not sure how other people manage to avoid a gap between videos 1 and 2, when they interlinked. The 'proper' Video 2 will be up on 27th.
I,too, see my back fence from my kitchen door. I am developing layers of plantings such as patio containers and plantings around the patio to divert the eye. The tips you gave have helped me solidify my goal. Thank you!
Thank you!
Great video. Gave me lots of ideas. And thankyou for being real regarding budgets. Must of us don’t have unlimited budgets and like you say we will need to take our time and create gradually over time as we can save money. Enjoyed watching 😊
Every one of your videos is such a gem. Thank you for sharing your knowledge! Looking forward to the next one!
Thank you so much.
I love how you mix practicality and beauty. Thank you these ideas on how to start and how to design these areas.
Glad you like them!
One of your best videos, Alexandra. Thank you!
Thank you!
Loved seeing the evolution of your parterre! I’ve been away for awhile and missed seeing the pergola installation. It is lovely! Cheers.
Thank you!
You're looking beautiful today. Like your perfect hair style. Thanks for the garden videos. You're my favorite . Learning and changing my English cottage garden..To the point and helpful. From Oregon in USA
Thank you so much
Thank you Madame🌺 We often make our own structures for much less and poor concrete to make our own things. Go to neighbors about town and ask!!! People are very generous. I go to tag sales and scoop up wonderful things for next to nothing Recently we built a courtyard with used bricks from the brickyard.....it was free. I also built a wishing well from recycled bricks...... don't wait ten years for anything 😮
So true! I bet the used bricks look even nicer than new ones would.
Great tips, Alexandra! Hope you had a wonderful Christmas holiday.
Painting or staining small focal area(s) is an economical way to add dimension to your garden. For example, staining wooden raised bed boards black, painting a wall trellis a bold colour or spray painting multiple pots the same colour and concentrate that group(scattering the height) with complimentary coloured flowers and foliage. For less than $50, paint and/or stain can do wonders for design.
Absolutely! thank you
Your garden is looking great, Alexandra, yet I feel like the far wall of the parterre is a little abrupt and would love to see you add some plants along the top edge, especially some that spill over the ledge 💚
We are hoping to plant along there, and also around the pergola because I think you're right about that
What a pretty pergola. It's lovely.
Your voice and presentation is perfect. Kept my attention for the whole video!
Thank you!
The idea of formal and simplified design close to our very modern home is the right way for us. Your specific ideas and visual aids were really helpful. By the way, the colors your’e wearing in this video are super flattering. Do you have these colors in your garden? We choose the colors in our home by what we like, but also by what’s flattering to our skin tones. Wondering if this might be wise in garden rooms where we sit or entertain. Thoughts?
What a great thought and thank you. I don't reflect the colours of my clothes in the garden consciously, but I imagine there is some unconscious influence, because if, for example, someone loves wearing pink, they probably choose pink flowers too.
This has been my decor and gardening colour practice for years!! I don't follow colour trends. I choose decor based on the colours that suit my skin tone, and when I started gardening, I chose the garden pallet to match! It helps narrow the field and makes it so much easier to make choices. And it stops one being blown about as colour trends come and go.
You are so brave to completely revamp such an integral part of the garden, going from beautiful softness of the mature lavender to this imposing white structure that is beautiful but yet an attention hog. I would be so scared to make such a huge change!
I was a bit worried, and I hope to plant lavender again, but I'm happy with it now I've done it.
Happy New Year of gardening, Alexandra. Thank you for this video. After the snow storm last night that left almost a foot of snow on the ground I was excited to start thinking about the spring and gardening 👩🌾 😊🍀
Happy New Year, and that's some snow!
Thank you Alexandra for another comprehensive and full of good advices video. It’s like a good reference book which I’ll be dipping in again and again. 👍
Thank you!
As always lots of sensible great ideas. Thank You....XXX
Great video. Very educational and so useful for all gardeners. Your pergola is very decorative, but looks more like a gazebo than a pergola to me. I always thought gazebos were long structures with climbers either side on each opposite post. Is it that gazebos are sat in, with maybe a table to have tea in? Thank you. Happy gardening 😃
I think there's quite a debate about this one, and that different people have different definitions (and I'm sure it's different again around the world), but I've decided to go along with 'a pergola doesn't have permanent shelter (ie a roof) and a gazebo has permanent shade or shelter because it has a roof'.
Some lovely ideas and suggestions. I’m looking forward to putting some of these into our garden . Many thanks 🙏
Thank you!
Happy New Year!
I love your channel and it’s given me the confidence to make some quite radical changes to my full summer sun, but deep winter shady, overlooked, small terraced garden; that has by-and-large paid off!
This year I’ll be saving up for some pleached hornbeams and a rowan tree, for the birds and for privacy. If I had any advice to the new gardener it would be, don’t rush things. Experiment. Don’t beat yourself up if you make mistakes. Pay close attention to how the sun moves about your garden throughout the year. Don’t be too quick to stick in a tree for summer shade. You might hate the heat in the summer, but in the winter, it might be the only patch of your garden that stays sunny.
Great advice, and pleached hornbeams are beautiful. Thank you.
REALLY GREAT video, Alexandra! I so, so, so appreciate it and hope to use some of the ideas you present. Have a blessed 2024.
Thank you! You too!
Those Alliums are gorgeous. I wish I could get them to grow. I've tried and tried. Unfortunately I think that for me, they are one of those plants I'm just jinxed with. There are several plants I'm jinxed with. Usually my problem is it's plants that can't take too much water. Avid overwaterer here in the hottest and driest city in the world. Adelaide South Australia.
I found it quite interesting seeing the before and afters, especially the premier photo as I don't ever remember seeing that.
Funnily enough, you're not the first person to say they have trouble with alliums. I haven't got to the bottom of what it might be, though, as alliums seem to spread in my garden.
I'm hoping this is the year we paint our back fence dark grey or black, as I've seen recommended on your channel. Our fence is very visible from the back door, though I've got some plantings ro screen it a bit. Thanks for the ideas!
You may already have seen this, but if not, it's a good example of a black fence in a garden where the back fence is very visible from the the back door. th-cam.com/video/AYWpiVp-pzE/w-d-xo.html Thank you!
The flock of chickens in the background made me smile, cute distractions!
Pleased that your good work here is appreciated and recognized by TH-cam. I don't know who advised that you put a big mass like that pergola closer to the house, but they were mistaken. The par Terre area low and the focal point, for example the pergola will look better on the big lawn, perhaps in the center or more to the right. A low above or in-ground basin with a modest jet of water would be beautiful where you presently have the pergola. It would draw people to it if only to splash the water, to sit on the edge, and listen. You don't make many mistakes and indeed if you are happy this is not a mistake. The pergola in the center of the big lawn, coved in wisteria, clematis, trumpet plants, whatever would draw admirers to it. All the best. I am presently being a bad ecologist and pump water from my well and spraying water around my palm and fig trees to provide them some warmth. The water simply goes back to the well, but the electric pump is a small sin.
probably only a very small one, though!
@@TheMiddlesizedGardenOne half to two meters. I have one large modern waterfall that I invented, one fountain that is 80 cm diameter, one 40 made from a rounded ceramic planter, and one oblong two meters by 50 centimeter. If the water reaches close to the rim or there is a perch, then the birds and dragonflies will drink from it.
Great ideas. I think your pergola works v well. It is so elegant!
Thanks so much! 😊
Love her garden and her voice lol. Very informative segment.
Glad you enjoyed it
Great ideas!
Thank you! 😊
Good afternoon Alexander, Gardens, gardens ... it is a never ending story!! I was thinking one day, I wished I had not bought any plants at the Nursery when we moved into our first house, still is the same place. I thought, we should have just kept the grass, waited a year or even two, go out window shopping at other established gardens, nurseries and garden exhibitions. Then, actually take a camera with and snap plants, trees and ornaments. Come home and start to analyse and decide from there what to do. I wonder if it would have helped me to be more successful and not have wasted money on unsuitable plants. What do you think Alexander? I am sure when so young and eager we miss the plot of gardening completely. Quite some time ago I had a sincere interest in Orchids. Did I mess those gorgeous plants up, I killed them all!! I did that through total ignorance, I joined a orchid club but they kept "all the growing and feeding" rituals to themselves. They is not share a thing. Now with the internet there are so many hints and tips on growing those beauties, and so many lovely people out there showing their plants, not just orchids, and they are so willing to share their experiences with any person that is willing to take note, like yourself for instance. We have neighbours in our area, in their back garden just grass, do not know what is infront of their home, storms come and go, they neve worry about their lawns, there you go, is that a solution or merely an option. Oh by the way, I have bought some orchid plants again, and hopefully they will thrive and I will be successful this time. I did hit panic stations when I brought them home, but I thought, you have all the information on-line, do not be fearful. What a challenge awaits me. Actually I needed a challenge in my life, and for me this will be something major. Thank you for good garden talk and advice as always, looking great in a bit of 'orange'. Many blessings.
Thank you - orchids are so beautiful, I hope you enjoy this second round of growing them.
Is there a distance where any tree will be too close to the house? I suppose you might say it depends. But, I bet there is a some ground rule in the minds of most garden designers. What would they say if they were asked?
Yes - 3/4 of the final height of the tree gives you the minimum distance from the house so a tree that grows to 30ft should be planted about 20ft away (rough figures)
I'm looking at a tree I planted about 12 feet from the house when it was 30 cm. Now it is 30 feet and it would be much better if it were 8 ft further. And, the branches wouldn't be coming up against the eves. Good advice, many thanks. @@TheMiddlesizedGarden
Wonderful and very helpful thoughts and elucidation of elements to consider! Thanks as ever 😃
Thank you so much!
Really great tips and ideas. Unfortunately my garden is above my cottage and accessed by a bridge so visually the cottage and garden don't interact. It's a real shame as we have a lovely old stone cottage which would look wonderful in conjunction with our cottage style garden
Interesting!
Great!
Happy New Year, Alexandra! Thank you!
Thank you too!
Hi thank you for the wonderful video, can you please tell me where is this red brick path with the square design,the path goes through the middle of a flower border, it is at 5.34 min. Thank you
Happy New Year,thank you for inspiration and helpful video.All the best.
Thank you!
I agree, you look very smart in the colors you chose to wear and I appreciate your advice. I look out onto my newly planted garden from my kitchen but at the back of it is my neighbor’s 6 foot fence that I would rather not see. I am trying to grow tall plants in the back of my border to cover it, since it is against the law for me to paint it or attach a trellis to it. Unfortunately, he planted Leland cypress on the other side only 4 feet from his fence so in a few years I will have a green wall and very dry soil and limited sun. I am pruning the branches as they come over the fence line to create a hedge. My concern is that plants won’t flourish under the Leland. Any advice?
If the trees are taking the moisture and nutrition from the soil, then you could consider raised beds along your boundary. If you live in the UK, there are regulations as to how high a Leylandii hedge can be. If you're pruning the branches back to the boundary line, your plants won't be 'under' the Leylandii branches, and if your border faces South, East or North, you should still get a reasonable amount of sun.
I now remember you talking about raised beds in a video. I hadn’t thought about that for this situation but I may consider doing that in sections where the plants are failing. Splendid idea! Thank you! I will check the regulations in the US for a height limit, but I don’t think it is a requirement in our neck of the woods. I love my north facing borders and will make the best of them as the neighbor’s tree line rockets up.
I'm surprised you aren't allowed to paint your side of the fence. That's unfortunate. I assume it's fully on your neighbour's property.
I call your spiral topiary the softy ice cream cone.
That's much nicer than what my niece called it - she says it looks like the poo emoji!
@@TheMiddlesizedGarden
😆
Thank you your videos are so interesting. Your hair look nice today. Happy New Year 💚
Thank you so much!
Excellent ideas. Happy New Year.
Thank you, and you!
Very interesting as always 🌱🌸👍 Happy New Year 🎆 and all the best for 2024 🎊🎉
Thank you! You too!
Great advice thank you but can't find second video 😢
At the moment, the second video is the ideas for 'difficult shady corner' as it covers some of the same territory and I haven't finished editing the main number 2 video, as I've had a couple of technical issues. I'm not sure how other people manage to avoid a gap between videos 1 and 2, when they interlinked. The 'proper' Video 2 will be up on 27th.
thank you @@TheMiddlesizedGarden I shall lookforward to it.
Those tall plants would totally block my neighbor, stealing some cuttings...
❤
Forgive me Alexandra but I believe you have undercounted the number of corners on your pergola!
I am not good at counting anything! But yes, it has 5 legs which was a bit perplexing but we decided not to worry about it.
Lol garden tv programmes, costs so much