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Developments in My Garden

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Recently I moved to an old cottage with about three acres around it on one of the foothills of Slieve Croob in the Mournes, Co. Down. Unfortunately the house was rented for some time and vacant for few years before I aquired it, so the only remnants of a garden are a few mature Fuchsia magellanica, Ribes sanguineum and conifers with lots of weeds and brambles. Still, it provides a clean slate to create a new garden.

(hold your mouse over the picture and a 'before' image will download)	I started at the front of the house which was a gravel yard bordered by grass. Using spoil from lowering the floors of the cottage, the concrete slab beside the door was softened by forming a flowerbed.
The front door steps were just squared off concrete so to soften them and blend with the stone walls and steps in the garden, replacement rounded ones were built. A planting hole was formed in the top step to the left of the door. As yet I haven't chosen a permanent plant so it's topped with a layer of flint stones (collected from years of digging) and a standard bay tree in a boule planter.	(hold your mouse over the picture and a 'before' image will download, this may not work if active content is turned off)
(hold your mouse over the picture and a 'before' image will download)	On the opposite side to the house the grass was covered for about six months with heavy black matting to kill the grass and weeds. Then more beds transformed the area. A gap was formed in the hedge at the back and four large boulders arranged as a Dolmen.
This path runs at the top of the yard garden following the edge of the original yard and around the back of the Phormium tenax 'Verigata' seen in the middle of the above picture.	(hold your mouse over the picture and a 'before' image will download)
(hold your mouse over the picture and an alternate image will download)	This is the view towards the house showing the "Dolmen", the top stone is quite large and required a hoist to install.
At the back of the house there was a steep, crumbling bank covered in brambles and weeds. To tidy up the area and provide access to the higher ground to the left of this picture, a dry-stone retaining wall was topped with a path which slopes down to the right, around the side of the house. The grass in the foreground has since been replaced with a wall garden.	(hold your mouse over the picture and a 'before' image will download)

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