Design Ideas

ShropshireLass

Hi all

Some driveway / landscaping works I've been having done are nearly finished (exciting!) and I will post before and after pictures, but in the meantime, I have a strip of ground, about 1.5m wide (4'11") and 10m long (32"9') which runs down a neighbour's hedge, from the back of the house to the garden.  

 

Here are before pics:

 Looking towards the garden

 Looking towards the house

 

And the after pics:

House end

Garden end

 

I would like to connect the house and garden and have this area planted somehow. Easiest of course would be a grassy strip, maybe with some bulbs underneath? Or I was thinking some wildflower planting maybe?

Any ideas gratefully received! 

bookmonster

That would certainly be an interesting place for a mini wildflower meadow, like natural hedge-side verges.

ShropshireLass

That's what I was thinking bookmonster! I was worried about how it would look next to the regulated and formal driveway area though...maybe the two contrasting styles would compliment each other? 

bookmonster

They may, or alternatively you could go for a more designed-looking wild area. We have a small garden so we are leaving a neat rectangle of lawn to grow long and I will be naturalising red clover and bird's foot trefoil as plugs next year.

auntie betty

You could put a neat little box or lavendar hedge around the edge and then have the wildflowers frothing out the top... That real contrast between the formal and blowsy works fantastically and has been a design staple for decades. Just bear in mind the short season of native wildflowers - you may want to add bulbs for early interest and maybe some prairie-style grasses and late flowering perennials to extend the season. You could even keep a few little pots of something clipped and topiary-ish to stand in there in winter, when everything else is akip. The world's your lobster...

Fairygirl

reported

Dovefromabove

Well done FG - I've done the other one - sounds revolting tatt 

Fairygirl

just done tons of 'em Dove- I'm on a mission! The last one was on the thread 'what can I put here?

Very nearly told them.....

Stacey Docherty

Well done fg!