A Tangle of Ivy

When we moved in we loved the way that our new garden contained all sorts of mature plants. It meant we could start enjoying the seasons of the garden while debating what changes we wanted to make. In this picture taken just under a year ago you can see that we have a long border running the length of the garden along the fence line, full of shrubs.

What you can't see is that the whole border is a tangle of ivy, and that a lot of the shrubs have been neglected over the last few years leaving them straggly, out of shape and overgrown. In the end we decided we'd need to be harsh with this area, leaving only the bare minimum and starting from scratch. 

Last summer Joe made a start at the right hand end, removing two hebe that were very woody stemmed and overflowing the lawn, waging war on the ivy and discovering that there was a beautiful peony hiding behind them - an excellent find. He did manage to take a runner from one hebe which is now flourishing in a pot and can go back into that border.

Recently in order to sort out our fence issue we made some progress clearing out the left hand end (so much easier while the fence panels were down) and last weekend we continued with that further meaning that this:

May 2013

has become this:

April 2014

and this:

May 2013

has become this:

April 2014

There's a little bit more to be done, but what we've cleared so far has left us with a blank slate. We've started to use the space to plant up things that needed it, but we're now at the point where we need a plan. This is our first garden and so far all our major changes have involved vegetables and chickens, and so we're really excited to have a large area of flower bed to work with and to start to truly make this our garden.