Thursday 14 April 2016

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!





19 comments:

  1. You design like we do except we are on a much smaller scale. It was fascinating to see the surrounding area from this perspective

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    1. You seem to get so much in your garden Sue that I can hardly believe you are smaller than me. (And I am not thinking of your height!)

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    2. At least ten of our gardens would fit in yours Roger. There is more space on the allotment though.

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  2. Great Post, notice to other readers click the full screen link on the video, turn sound up.

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    1. Thanks for the tip Paul and thanks also for the music overlay

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  3. How fantastic to get this perspective on your garden. Thanks for posting, I really enjoyed this.

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  4. Wow - will this be another essential piece of kit for the keen gardener!

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  5. Fascinating to see Roger, I bought an aerial photograph of the house several years ago and managed to get it at half price as most of the garden was obscured by trees!

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  6. Fabulous perception altering blog Roger. The ratio of habitation to farm land is far smaller than you might imagine by driving along the country roads that pass through villages and isolated farm houses. The flatness of the plain of York is also dramatically demonstrated.
    It will be great if Steven can fly between your herbaceous beds along the grass paths as they develop later in the season. Does he take commissions - I would love to see our plot from above.

    Peter

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    1. I think if we spoke to him nicely or Julie bribed him with her fabulous cakes...

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  7. Loved that! I liked the no-hedge uninterrupted view idea too: I automatically think a garden needs a hedge!
    Nice piano piece too!

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    1. We are lucky not to being overlooked by other properties or suffering noisy neighbours!

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  8. That is a modern twist on garden visiting. No trees or hedges to filter the wind?

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    1. A very interesting comment Brian. The way I garden is very personal and in no way an indication of a modern trend. If you don't mind I will soon write a post about some of the implications behind the question!

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  9. aye when i were a lad, all this were fields

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