Garden design from a drone

Notes from on high

The folks from Folkestone were with us for Easter. Brenda’s son Steven has got a new toy.

We have many memories of children with flying contraptions. Brenda has suffered putting the wretched things together, witnessing their failure to fly and soothing distraught kids when their models crash and are shattered on their inaugural flight!

Not any longer. Steven’s has bought himself his own Easter present -a drone. Immediately on their arrival it was parked on the lawn. One click on an iphone control panel and there was a smooth vertical ascendance.

An hour later there was a video and photos of my garden transferred to my own computer. Thanks Steve for the opportunity to show my readers a different perspective.

These pictures enable me to show you some features of my garden’s design. Yes it really was designed!  Not on paper, I am quite incapable of that. I worked to vague notions in my head and the garden organically grew. One thing leads to another…

You can see Boundary Cottage has no boundaries, nor is it a cottage! We are lucky to live in the country and have wide ranging views. From our level landscape you can see we look out onto the Yorkshire Wolds. Some people chose to enclose themselves behind high hedges. Not us. You design your garden for your own private needs.

You can see the Mills family sitting under the pergola. The man in red is controlling the drone! In summer grapes hang down from the pergola. They provide food for the birds.

The border in front of the garage is a bit of a dog’s breakfast. You can see in the garage window my aeoniums overwintering. I will soon be blogging about the orange cut leaf maple in front of our bedroom in our ‘granny anex’

The birch tree at the bottom of the picture is one of the few trees original to our garden when we moved in fifteen years ago. One of the first  garden features I developed were the twin ponds under that tree. The ponds  are only cleaned out when I use my scarifier to hook out weed and leaf debris. There is no filter but the water is crystal clear. It is full of animal life which I will show you next week.

To the right of the two greenhouses is my vegetable garden. After nearly ten years of adding my homemade charcoal it is starting to change colour. In another fifty years I might claim it is terra preta

The far corner of the farm field at the bottom of the garden floods in winter. Somehow some of my own bog plants have found their way over. The soil in my garden is almost pure fine sand/coarse silt. Six foot down is a natural basin of clay. The site receives ample drainage water but has a huge two hundred year old land drain that takes surplus water away. It’s a perfect combination as it usually retains moisture throughout the Summer.

Cathi lives next door in Melbourne! The boundary is a low one. I clip the privet hedge  - which was formerly 12 foot high - narrow and low.

You might discern that I have been somewhat opportunistic in exploiting edges of my garden that are not strictly my own.

The farmer leaves me quite a wide edge that I prefer to contain flowers rather than nettles and marestail. I have been lucky to be able to eliminate perennial weeds from the outside. I feel sorry for those gardeners who eliminate their own weed and then weeds such as ground elder comes back in from a weedy neighbour!

There are a couple of projects on the edge of the farm field that I have not yet revealed! The edge is starting to look a little more grassy and something is happening in that block of grass at the entrance to the farm field….

The picture also reveals the location of Cathi’s grass verge which as readers know is my current horticultural enthusiasm.

It looks very stark in Winter as most of my plants are herbaceous perennials. I can’t wait for Steven’s next visit!

I have tried to make the lines of my borders smooth ones!

In March my lawn is in less than in perfect condition. Grass is the connecting element as you walk round. It takes about an hour to mulch mow. It would be more if I boxed off my mowings. Edging with long handled edging shears takes rather longer – as much as three hours. In Summer I mow about once a week and edge very infrequently!

My garden is designed to give long extended views. Without even trying the garden’s natural development has achieved the frequently reccomended ‘element of surprise’.

You might like to watch this video to fly round my garden!