Future Planning

The garden is divided into three main zones.

Zone 1 contains a bordered area covered in plum slate. It's got a rockery at one end and a plant at the other but largely it consists of a place to put planters and pots.

Zone 2 is at the back left and consists of a weeping-type shrub and loads of randomly-selected plants leading to a huge overgrowth of madness. Sweet peas and all sorts have grown like mad. The plan for next year is to hand this section over to Fran and Sam once I've raised and levelled it off and it will then mostly form a lawn with the odd low-lying meadow flower, plus a border etc for them both to plant stuff in.

Zone 3 is my tiers. Here's an old picture that I've scrawled numbers onto:

It's not a great representation as the whole thing looks a bit different now but you get the general idea. The tiers were put in place fairly late in the year so I never got round to planting anything much other than some shrubs and fruit bushes. We originally planned one of the tiers (3b) as being the lawn and Sam's play area but I ultimately decided it's too small and potentially unstable. This led to the decision to turn zone 2 over to lawn and Sam.

So the future plans for this are now under consideration. 3a is currently fruit and the odd shrub. I'll probably add what other fruit plants I can fit in there, possibly including a container dwarf plum tree - though this is likely to unbalance the look of the thing and may be better sited elsewhere. This is an ericaceous zone by intent but it certainly suffers a massive buffering effect from the tier soils and the underlying clay.

The remaining zones I think I will dedicate to colours. This isn't particularly radical but I like the idea of them acting as contrasting solid blocks of colour. 3e has a black sambucus (which is staying put) so I have dedicated this to Pink. I think this will work well as contrasted against the black of the sambucus. The sambucus also produces small pink flowers to tie it together. 3c will be white. It'll have pale foliage where possible and clean, white flowering plants. The shrub in this zone is (I think) a plant that produces small pink flowers and white berries so this should work nicely across from the black and pink zone.

3b and 3d are more difficult. I thought of orange for the front to go with the dragon (firey colours, etc) but I think that would be too distracting in the foreground. I may move the dragon to the back to switch places with the easter island head but I also think the positioning of them would then look wrong. I think I'd rather have the orange at the back.

3b is possibly going to be done as just green but then there's not many green flowers and I don't think I want just foliage. Blue I'm not very keen on, I think purple, yellow and red would all distract as well. Hmm, maybe I'll go with green. It'll be a challenge to find much suitable but I'm sure there has to be something.

So in summary:

Zone 1 - no change
Zone 2 - lawn, meadow plants, some bedding things
Zone 3a - no change, fruit and shrubs
Zone 3b - green
Zone 3c - white
Zone 3d - orange
Zone 3e - pink

Yes, that'll do.