Our new outdoor vertical garden and living wall

When we planned our garden last year, a living wall was a part of the design. We had a big expanse of brick wall right next to the main seating area, and a vertical garden was the perfect thing to fill the space. But we couldn't do everything at once, so adding the living wall was first on our list when it came to garden projects for the year.

After some research we chose a Shady Daze vertical garden kit with PlantBox. We paid £438 for the largest kit - ten troughs, 40 shade tolerant evergreen plants and a bag of compost. We also bought the watering kit. This is not essential, but as it can connect to the adjacent hosepipe it will make the watering from the top of the planter much easier.

Buying a full living wall as a kit is an expensive way to do it, and of course there are cheaper solutions available. But we wanted to install a sturdy set up, so we chose a company with great reviews and excellent customer support. I am also no expert when it comes to choosing plants, so having a selection of suitable plants delivered directly to me, ready to plant, was a must.

We arranged for the planting troughs to be delivered a few days before the plants so that we had time to attach them to the wall before planting. You can plant the troughs up first, but I think that would make it very awkward to mount them. Assembling the troughs was straightforward - I found a video online to follow and it didn't take too long. Attaching to the wall took a little longer only because our DIY skills are fairly basic, but even we didn't have too much trouble. Measuring for the holes and trying to avoid the grout between the bricks was the most difficult part!

The plants arrived a few days later, well packaged and mostly labelled. I did some research into planting ideas but in the end it wasn't too difficult. I just spread the plants out, trying to place hanging ones like ivy around the edges and at the bottom, taller ones to the top and aiming for a mixture of different shades and textures. The plants were mainly in 12cm pots so they are already a good size, and they will soon grow to fill the gaps. 

We are so pleased with how it looks! It was a really quick and easy way to add a huge amount of interest to a bare wall. I've been eyeing up the rest of the garden to see if we can add any more - I love the idea of putting another one in for herbs or colourful flowers. 

I think it will be fairly easy to maintain - each trough has a water reservoir with an indicator so you can see if you need to add more water, and the water should last for a week or two even in summer. I might just need to trim it a bit if it starts to look overgrown.

I can see the living wall easily from the house so I can admire it from inside, and I'm looking forward to enjoying it for a long time to come!

Garden update - is it dead or alive?

Last year we completely transformed our garden, and for the first time I actually did some proper gardening. Over the summer we came back from the garden centre almost every weekend, gradually filling the empty beds and making some long term gardening plans. 

As winter approached I started to get nervous, desperately hoping that all the time and money we had invested wouldn't go to waste when the frosts kicked in. I didn't dare to venture outside for most of the winter, feeling sorry for all my plants suffering out there in the cold.

Now that the garden has finally dried out a bit and the temperature is slowly increasing I've been stepping outside to check on things, peering closely at developing shoots and anxiously trying to work out what is starting to revive and what is definitely dead. Fortunately, some of the plants that I had lost hope for have turned out to be just resting, and things are starting to come back to life.

I was very relieved to remove the fleece from my canna lilies and discover new shoots. I loved them last summer, and they produced beautiful flowers for months. Fingers crossed they will give me another lovely display. I'll cut back the dead stalks when it is a little warmer, I'm just giving them a bit of extra protection from the cold for now.

We bought this photinia (Carre Rouge) to go along our back fence, where the view is dominated by other houses and their sheds. I'm hoping it will grow out to screen the area, and I love these gorgeous red leaves.

I'm also pleased to see that my Acer is sending out new shoots for the spring. It is in an exposed bed which isn't the best position for it, so it looked a little scraggly after we planted it. Hopefully as it matures, and as the vegetation grows up around it, it will begin to look a bit happier.

I was positive that my new fuschia was dead, but then I had a good look and saw new growth at the bottom! Likewise there are a few other small shrubs that didn't look well at all a few weeks ago but are starting to show signs of life.

I also thought that my clematis was a goner, but it is coming back beautifully! I'm really hoping that it will get going this year, as it stayed rather spindly last year. Behind it you can see a honeysuckle which my mum gave me and has really grown well over the winter. I want to cover this trellis and our pergola with greenery, and I'm so impatient for everything to grow up.

Unfortunately it looks as though my dahlias were not strong enough to survive the winter, I've not given up hope quite yet. but they aren't showing any signs of life. I've also lost two of my three delphiniums, and I'm not hopeful for my salvias.

At least this year I've got more of an idea about what I'm doing, and it's a case of building on what we have rather than starting from scratch. I've already got flower seedlings growing, and I'll be planting more over the next few weeks. I'm hoping for a second year with a garden filled with flowers!

The canna lilies last summer

Enjoying the garden as summer comes to an end

It's time to accept that the long summer is coming to an end. We've been so lucky this year with the weather, and we've really made the most of the our lovely garden that was finished in the spring. The weather this weekend was still really nice, a little bit of rain but it hasn't started to get too cold yet. So I decided it was a good time to make a start on preparing the garden for winter.

I began with the vegetable patch, clearing it all out and tidying up my strawberry and raspberry plants. I hope that they survive the winter! I also have some foxgloves that I planted from seed a couple of months ago. Some are in the borders and some are in pots, I'm keen to see if they survive and how they compare to the seeds which I'll plant in the spring.

We get a lot of fallen leaves in the garden and usually I'm out there picking them all up, this year I'm going to experiment with leaving the ones that fall in the borders and moving ones from the paths to the vegetable patch to see if they help the soil at all.

I pulled up my remaining tomato plants and picked off the last green tomatoes, hoping that if I leave them indoors in the sun then they might ripen. My tomatoes were amazing this year, I think it was a combination of the great weather and the new topsoil that we had added to the vegetable patch. I had so many that for a couple of weeks I was making a big batch of tomato soup every day and stocking up the freezer.

I've packed away some of the garden chairs because they are quite light and they blow around in the wind. But I want to keep my little table and one chair out on our breakfast patio, with the intention of sitting out there whenever it's warm enough. I had a lovely sit with my Kindle after all my hard work.

The canna lilies on the right have been amazing this year. I planted them in May after a recommendation by our garden designer and I wasn't quite sure about them, but they've been incredible. I cut back the flower heads just as they are starting to finish, and more and more kept appearing with plenty of buds still to flower. I know that they will die down soon and I'll have to decide whether to dig them up for the winter or to just wrap them in fleece and keep my fingers crossed for their survival!

I still need to plant my bulbs, I've never bought bulbs before and I went a bit mad at the garden centre a few weeks ago. I'm planning on putting some in the centre of my vegetable patch, which is always an awkward space for growing things as it's difficult to reach from the edges. Ideally I will end up with some lovely flowers which I can pick for the house. Then I'm just going to fill all my borders and spare pots and see what happens!

There's still an apple tree that needs pruning and lots of weeds growing between the stones in our beautiful front garden - I've got lots to keep me busy!

Our transformed front garden

A couple of weeks ago I shared our back garden, and today I'm sharing our front garden transformation! Before it was very boring, just grass which was mainly weeds, always shaded because of the overgrown hedge.

We decided to take some inspiration from a neighbour's recent landscaping and open it all up with a pebbled garden inspired by our local beaches. Although we have removed the old hedge, we have left a marked out bed to replant it later in the year, perhaps with something a little lower in height. The apple tree remains, although it's definitely ready for a good prune this Autumn!

We needed to create a new gate to the other side of the house so we extended the path. The slabs are the same as those that we used in the back garden and they also match the indoor tiles. We added a deep new flower bed in front of each window and have planted those with hydrangeas. I'm trying to keep them blue so I've been using ericaceous compost and fertiliser which is supposed to enhance the blue colour! They are doing really well considering they had no flowers when we planted them a month ago. I'm constantly watering them! I chose blue petunias to match for this year.

We had the garden designed for us which really helped as I wouldn't have known where to start. The landscaper came up with the pebble arrangement and then my designer helped with buying the plants and where to place them. Me and Harry planted them and it was such a difficult job, the ground underneath was really compacted and full of gravel, stones and sand. Luckily despite the poor soil they all seem to be growing well.

We have a mixture of different grasses and also some different types of euphorbia. (I'm not very good with identifying plants!) If the garden opposite is anything to go by, in a few years they will have grown up quite a lot and it will look a little less sparse.

I really like the different mix of colours and textures. I'll be planting some bulbs in the Autumn for next year, and I'm hoping that the hydrangeas will grow to fill the borders.

It makes such a difference to the front of our house and although I do miss some of the privacy that we had from the hedge I've got used to it now. It's nice to be a bit more open, and the front of the house feels much lighter. Now I just need to come up with a plan for the front hedge area.

My 'secret' vegetable patch

I've shared lots of photos of my vegetable patch over the years, but I'm not sure that I've every included a photo that gives a proper look at the space. Because I think it's a special space, and with planned building work in our garden this summer I'm working hard to make it a little sanctuary hidden away when I want to spend time in the garden without builders watching my every move!

Our garden extends out from the back of the house like most gardens, but we also have a separate double garage next to the house. The vegetable patch is behind the garage, so it's joined to the garden but off to one side and it can't really be seen from the house. The previous owners put up the trellis sides. Originally there were some flimsy gates but they have broken so I've been training some ivy over the top to make an archway. It's quite low, but luckily I'm short so I can easily fit underneath!

To the left of the entrance you can find Beowulf. I found him hidden behind overgrown vegetation in the garden of our old house and I brought him along with us. I named him after the Old English poem that I studied at university and I call him the guardian of the garden that makes sure everything grows well. If I accidently cut some flowers, I'll leave them by his feet as an offering! 

Also around the entrance I have a couple of decorations that I've made using stones with holes in from the beach - they are really common on our local beaches. Some people call them hag stones and think that they have magical properties. The lovely birdhouse was made by my husband at a team building event, although we've not actually had any birds in it yet!

My vegetable patch was a little delayed this year as we don't have a set start date for our building works. So last week I made a trip to the garden centre and picked up some bedding plants to put out into my planters - hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll have some more colour to enjoy.

At the back of the vegetable patch I just have a few pots and some plants which are probably technically weeds but have some pretty orange flowers and nicely cover a bare patch of ground. This is where I'll be putting my chair when I want to hide away and enjoy my plants and listen to the bees buzzing around the lavender bush.

The rest of our garden is really boring and is in a bit of a state as the summer house is falling down and the old wooden swing set is looking a little dicey. We are hoping to be able to do some work in the garden next summer, until then this is definitely my favourite part of the garden!

End of June garden update

I'm not much of a gardener but I do like to try and make an effort, so I thought I'd do a quick update on how my garden is looking as we get to the end of June!

I was late planting out my seedlings this year, and I was starting to get a bit worried about them. We had over a month of sunshine with no rain which was glorious, but even though I watered my plants every day they just weren't growing. I think it was just too hot. But we've had a couple of cooler days now along with some rain, and almost overnight everything in the garden recovered and started growing like mad!

I love my vegetable patch, it's a separate area from the main garden with a large raised bed and paving slabs around the outside for pots. It has a trellis fence with a gap in the middle and I've been growing ivy over it to try and make it look a little more mysterious. The focal point of my vegetable patch is the enormous lavender bush that ended up there by mistake. I need to do something about it really otherwise the whole vegetable patch will become a lavender patch! It's recently come into flower and is attracting plenty of bees which is really good to see.

I currently have twenty-two tomato plants spread over the vegetable patch and in pots. That is what happens when you plant plenty of seeds in case some don't germinate and then they all do, and you can't bear to get rid of any tiny seedlings! I did lose a couple along the way to slugs, but I probably did over-compensate. I also have about seven broccoli plants although they are looking a bit spindly at the moment.

The tomato plants in pots usually do just as well as the ones that are planted out in the soil, and one of them is enormous already! I love working through the vegetable patch picking out the side shoots, it's a really peaceful and satisfying job.

I planted lots of sunflowers this year but they are taking a while to get going, and the slugs did get a few. The seedlings around the bottom are not weeds, they are a wildflower mix that I planted for some colour, I hope that they pick up a bit!

My garden is all very green at the moment so I'm appreciating the colour from these lovely nasturtiums which my mum gave me a few weeks ago. 

I also have a wild section to the garden around the side of the house where I've had some nice poppies, as well as nettles and enormous dandelions. I'm hoping to attract back the hedgehogs that we used to have living in our hedgehog house!

I'm looking forward to a bumper tomato harvest this year!