hi welcome back to garden ninja now today the sun is out and I'm up here in
Bury now dealing with a really overlooked about garden but rather than
entirely redesign it what I've done is change the planting scheme because
sometimes you don't need to do wholesale hard landscaping and rip everything out
so in this example I'm gonna be showing you how over there you can screen off
against rather unsightly windows and properties using a mix of trees and
herbaceous shrubs and perennials so I'm gonna keep you up to date today and check
back from me the garden ninja with how I'm gonna turn this it's a really
desirable private garden. So here's the garden before now it's a nice size
garden as you can see it's quite long but if you look at the very bottom
you'll see that gray building with the cladding on the front and that's the new
build house that's going up so unfortunately now the owners feel
like they're really heavily overlooked there's a number of other windows that
peer onto the garden and they feel like they need more privacy so this
example rather than being about hard landscaping is how we can use softer
landscaping elements trees and planting plans to both provide privacy and also
distract the guests in the garden from looking up and looking at those windows
so we're not talking about completely blocking them out but we're giving like
broken views distraction technique and pulling your vision down the garden into the
borders rather than up and out towards that house.
So the trees have just arrived here is one of the examples behind me in the
distance now these are an Acer platanoides Globosum and they've been pruned
in a way that gives them a goblet almost lollipop look. So we're
going to use these as punctuation marks throughout the garden to help screen off
the privacy without putting up huge walls give them a bit of a prune and tidy later on the effect you can get by using a few
specimen trees really well so the trees are now in I've staked them and I'm
giving them a thorough watering it's set to be scorcher today about 25
degrees and planting trees in this weather isn't ideal so you need to keep
them hydrated because they will soon lose water and start to wilt up so it's
all about hydration today but they're in a level they've been stakes and the next
stage I'm gonna move on to arranging the herbaceous planting which is going to make
this garden sing and look absolutely beautiful!
So a little design trick that I'm using in this garden is repetition now it's a
long skinny garden there's already some existing borders but you've got these
views here that make the clients feel kind of overlooked and like the previous
has been taken away a little bit so the whole aim of this planting scheme is to
break up that view which I've shown you before on this channel in other designs
but also to repeat patterns here near the house further down at the bottom
down there so what you'll see when I show you the planting is it we've got
the same plants in different groups going
bing-bing-bing-bing all the way down so your eyes drawn down the garden and not
at the house so I'm going to carry on and I'll show you some of the example
plantings in a bit so it's the second day of planting here in Manchester it's about
10:00 in the morning the Sun is beaming out its mega hot I've remembered my
gimble so no more shaky cam but I just want to talk you through some of the
plant choices that I've used in this garden now the client really liked sort
of soft curves and round shapes and I've reflected that in the punting so you can
have a look behind me we've got the box balls there which is
like the evergreen structure and that's the punctuation we're there not there
got the Acer trees that are planted yesterday again that round shape giving
structure diverting eyes away from those overlooked views in terms of the
planting we've got a mix of sort of tall vertical planting and then softer round
shapes so things like the Echinops have a round flower on them we've also got the
Geums that kind of form a mound that looks a little bit like a ball and
they're quite heavy plants so what I've done with the Geum is as a dotted some
of those around the back and with their Verbena to give sort of a bit of weight
so totally tangerine the Geum is quite a large specimen whereas you've got things
like Scarlet tempest which is a lot smaller so that they are near the
front also things like Achillea we've got a
terracotta and yellow credo which is a bright yellow they're dotted around
they've got silvery foliage and they will just lift the planting up so you've
got the purples you've got the blues there we've got the clash the contrast
of the yellows and the oranges and that planting pattern continues in the house
all the way down draws you right down the garden with consistency and I'm
following those shapes time and time again so that it feels really
comfortable and that your eyes being drawn down the garden and you've got
that key consistency in repetition if you didn't do that and you went for sort
of a pick and mix planting scheme you kind of get that disjointed feeling it doesn't
feel too comfortable so whilst you might think we've got loads of rioting
excitement you can actually kind of course the opposites effects where
people feel a bit flustered and think well don't really know where to look I'm
just going to look at my feet or stay here you want to guide people around the
garden using your planting and design.
Now yesterday I talked about different varieties of the same species and how
you can get a different effects by working out the growth habit and a good
example is Verbena so you've got the Bonariensis and sits at the back which
goes really tall but you can see through it and then you've got Verbena
lollipop which I'm planting in the front which is a smaller specimen it's got a
tighter stem structure and much smaller flowers so if I was to pop Bonariensis
at the front it's really tall it kind of gets in the way it's distracting but if
I put lollipop in there smaller to get the same effect but I can see through it
makes more sense so another top tip is you always want to
put your tall and heavy especially towards the back or the middle of a
border things like Salvia that we've got in this planting scheme Salvia cardonna
if you put that near the front when it reaches full height it's really dense
it's thick it's like a full stop that goes so we don't want that at the front
you won't buy either in the middle or at the back because if you put them at the
front it stops the flow you immediately drawn to it and you're like I can't see
through I don't know what's next it's just about careful positioning of your
plants and before you put it into the ground move them around going up a cup
of coffee go and check on the hour just plant finder to make sure that they're
in the right spot and then commit them but don't worry
didn't work you can always take them off and leave them
and again at the bottom of the gardener got the same repetition pup pup pup but
the Buxus balls that are going to give you the evergreen structure the planting
scheme that talked you through earlier in the day and I'm really pleased with
this one I think it's really consistent and although the house is obviously
still there and there's not much you can do about that and you stood at the end
and I'll show you a photo now you can see how your eyes immediately drawn down
to the planting rather than up towards that house so if you liked this video why not
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