E.L.Rothery Garden Design

This should keep me busy in 2023! I sucessfully presented my concept drawing to my new clients last week. They have beautifully restored the inside of their home & cleared the overgrowth ready to have fun with the outside! Thanks to for his award winning cantilever patio, which is one idea from the moodboard that the clients would love to recreate! Other inspiration comes from , local play parks & even the gorgeous liquid amber trees at Morrisons car park in Fleet! Design inspo can come from anywhere & everywhere & with a canvas this big you could go crazy but we want to be sensitive to nature & the setting so aim to work in harmony with it; relocating stone & soil & using sustainable materials & methods as much as possible. Exciting!

Laylandiis suck the life out of soil so nothing can thrive. The only option for my client was to raise this area up to plant it. I used EverEdge Titan Mini 200mm in slate. This is a commercially available product from . Very easy to install, even into hard, root bound soil like this! I’ve backfilled with the cardboard packaging the steel came in, some gorgeous well-rotted manure compost from The Compost Centre & Sylva peat-free ericaceous compost. Once the dry-shade tolerant plants from thaw out I’ll be planting them to compliment the rest of the mature garden & realise my initial sketch.

End of day 2 vs beginning & end of day 1. I’m always amazed at how quickly a border can be cleared & prepared (although several spades succumbed to the roots & rubble). Thank you Team ; it made popping in the lovely parterre plants from & euonymus Jean Hughes hedging from .co.uk a breeze. Now onto the back garden!

Pretty proud of this year’s offering! No plastic; everything is reusable or natural. Spam me with yours!

Finished this front garden transformation today, just before the rain came down again! A terminally damaged prunus dominated the lawn & robbed the east-facing side of the house of much needed light. I created a sketch & naturalistic, wildlife-friendly planting plan to help my client’s case for planning permission. It was thankfully granted without dispute but then the long, hot summer happened! Fast forward & half the lawn was removed & permeable soil stabilisation grids installed with a mix of pink shingle & Scottish pebbles for an environmentally friendly way of adding an extra car space. A gorgeous crab apple (Malus Sun Rival) was planted to provide spring blossom & apples in autumn, under planted with wildflower plugs & bulbs. A huge waterbutt with timed, drip irrigation will keep the woodland inspired plants from happy. Lighting from illuminated the paths & key plants. 🥰

This is a really useful blog

What Does £25,000 Buy You In Landscaping? - Hollandscapes Paul Baker from Holland Landscapes discusses what your budget will buy you in landscaping and breaks down the costs of building a £25,000 family garden.

The garden didn’t get the memo that it’s November!! 🙄

In Spring I started working on this garden in Camberley. The owner could no longer maintain the cottage style he’d created; it was overrun by self-seeders & bindweed. His wife wanted simple shrubs that could be kept neat. As is always the case when a designer gets involved; the project evolved from gardening to also landscaping! Fortunately, my clients were open minded to anything that helped make the most of the space.

✅The rear of the garden was too messy & is now lawn stuffed with spring bulbs.
✅The sunken garden was completely hidden by mature roses that were not thriving because of the acer & there was no path to it so it was never destination. The landscaper was able to create a matching path using the left over porcelain from the patio. The roses are now moved & many of the original plants donated
✅The fountain that the clients love wasn’t a focal point because of the huge holly tree & always swamped by the cotinus so that now has pride of place in the corner & to the delight of the client removal of the holly has revealed the neighbour’s silver birch!
✅The black fence unifies the boundaries, is in keeping with the client’s tastes inside the home & will make the colourful plants pop.
✅Colourful shrubs for year-round interest (modified acid-neutral soil) - Daphnes, abelias, camellia, viburnum tinus (lollipop standards), nandina, choysia, phormium, forsythia, lavender, salvia hotlips, cotinus, pittosporums, peiris, philadelphus, convolvulus cneorum, leucothoe, trachelospermum, Physocarpus opulifolius 'Diabolo’, cornus & roses.

My clients were bamboozled with their triangular plot & fed up of looking at privet! They’ve tried different furniture but still felt hemmed in because they were limited by their patio. Solution - extend into the lawn to create an entertainment area that catches the evening sun & take the furniture away from the direct view of the bifolds. Offer a destination to catch the year-round morning sun & grow plants that the doggos won’t dig up! Hide the ‘working zones’, create a dog loo to keep the lawn pristine & bring the BBQ to the party instead of the chef being hidden around the corner! Thanks for your egg chair/pergola design inspiration for the moodboard! 😀

https://fb.me/e/2RHKMarMF

Last Summer this garden was a bit uninspiring to look at & my client said she didn’t feel a pull into the space despite having a big patio installed a few years before. The grass was irregular & muddy from the dogs. The laurels & a huge bay, sapped all moisture & light from the borders so all gardening attempts had ended in disappointment.

The brief therefore, was to design a contemporary, family space for year-round enjoyment with a space the dogs could be washed off after a walk & play plus a big shed, bike store & place for the bins.

As well as the snazzy features from & landscaping by Steve .co.uk I’ve just finished bedding in new plants from . My client has also enjoyed a big sofa dining set with manoeuvrable shade sail, a new covered BBQ area & lighting from sets the evening ambiance to extend the time they spend appreciating their outdoor space. Water harvesting is essential in my mind so we have sourced gigantic yet discrete butts from & installed drip irrigation plus a heavy mulch of well rotted manure from to minimise the need to use tap water. Now onto the front garden! Watch this space.

Quite a long time ago I visited a very overgrown coach yard complete with grade 2 listed jockey mount, a terrifying pit, lots of concrete & a fantastic ancient wisteria. The owners had beautifully renovated & updated the house but were stumped with what to do this lovely sunny space. So I put on my thinking cap on & doodled a little doodle … a few months later the amazing landscaping team Kebur Landscape Division got to work & the clients commissioned bespoke CorTen steel planters with plants from North Hill Nurseries & crafted their own outdoor kitchen. They’ve now got an impressive, functional space, sensitively in-keeping with the history of the area, that they now use!

Master planning!

I’ve just picked up this gorgeous message to & I “love sitting on our own private little oasis 🪴. Viewing all the plants and space. The doggies love exploring and smelling all the new sniffs. As it has brought so much more wildlife to our once green and boring space. You’re always welcome to pop over”

Popped by my client’s today to add wires for their new wisteria. The borders have padded out nicely with robust favourites: geum Totally Tangerine, achillea Moonshine, geranium Rozanne & the dramatic canna Tropicana. Temporary fencing has gone up to protect the plants from the dogs my client boards but they will do no harm to the pups. It all feels such an inviting, tranquil yet functional space now.

🔥 Tropical Fleet! 🌴 Lots of planting plans happening behind the scenes but not the right time to see them in the ground. I promise there will be a flurry of posts come September 😊 For now I’m soaking up the joy that is Summer in my little piece of Heaven. How are you doing?

Just had this lovely message from my clients. They called me to help them soften their newly hardscaped garden. 🤔 The challenge for me was that this was not my design & the landscaper had not planned any borders. With line spray & using props from the garden we worked together to find perfect spots to sit & encourage people to use the whole garden. 💪 Then over several weekends, my client worked hard to create a beach area for the hammock 🏝 , a gravel area by the pet memorials for quiet reflection & enhanced the arbour by the oak. 🌺 Deep well-prepared borders connected them & EverEdge was installed to keep everything crisp. Right plant, right place - we had to be mindful of heavily compacted builder’s rubble & clay in places & deep dry shade in others yet still make a harmonious, low-maintenance, budget-friendly & doggy-safe planting scheme! 👏 Thanks to for materials & plants & of course my clients for getting stuck in; true team-effort!

I love coming home to my little haven after 3 very hard days of digging out an overgrown garden. This is a surprisingly low maintenance garden which is perfect for my needs. We harvested the first rainbow chard this week & looking forward to raspberries, tomatoes, strawberries, beans & potatoes

It may not surprise many of you to know that when I’m not gardening, I can’t sit still. 🙄 This week between designing, I’ve been hell-bent on turning an incredibly bland but very comfy cream vinyl chair gifted to us by my parents into this snazzy little burgundy number! Chesterfield anyone? ⏩ Swipe left for the before pics including the scary Bagpuss moment. 😬

He, he, heee! 🐝

Chuffed to bits with my conversion of this oak barrel to water butt. It’s maybe not the most aesthetically interesting post but a practical one with an environmental slant. Have you noticed how dry April has been? My other 200l butts are empty! I needed something for my front garden that blended in the house as it’s in full view.
Steps
1. Purchase used oak barrel with lid removed from eBay. Pre-drilled is more expensive so I drilled it myself but wished I hadn’t!
2. Fortunately l already had rain water diverter & connections from replacing our kitchen sink but I did have to buy some bulkhead fittings https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B094R2FYYW?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_F292BJQ5ZNWZR6WC93WP
3. Irrigation system, tap & timer purchased from https://www.greenhousesensation.co.uk/greenhouse-irrigation-systems/watering-kits/water-butt-watering-kits/You need their tap as it’s perfectly fitted to the timer so doesn’t leak
4. Pre-loved tap, hose lock connection & hose to access the bottom portion of water as I’m not using a stand
5. Drill 2 or 3 x holes using 38mm hole saw drill bit. 1. Rainwater diverter, 2. Irrigation 3. Bottom tap unless you are using a stand. If you don’t have a hole saw, I’d recommend this as it’s fiddly to get the wood out of the bit https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09FYX8RDR?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_P9B6ZQT827WW0P0SSP7Z

Well that’s a bit more interesting! This is a dog-safe garden with year-round interest & gentle screening. The planting choices considered sniffability, chewsbility, piddle-resistance & even medicinal properties for 🐶. Hopefully humans will enjoy the scheme too 😅 Thank you to & team for the brilliant build for their stunning porcelain raised borders & for their high quality plants, for the porcelain & Sarah .pyrography for her assistance

How many emotions does gardening give you? I’m literally as full to bursting with excitement as the buds on my client’s Wisteria are. It’s a late, dark-flowering variety trained as a standard & I’ve never experienced a scent like it. Exotically delicious! As the meadow bulbs below finish, the wisteria will bloom followed by the first flush of wildflowers. I tend this 10m x 1m bed twice per year - no extra food or water. From it we get year-round interest, an amazing array of wildlife, cut flowers & joy. Watch this space next week for it full purple rain glory!