Our hearts leapt when we saw this city garden for the first time, there was so much potential! The garden area had been added to by the purchase of some extra space from two adjoining houses. Our brief was to make a lovely garden that could be enjoyed throughout the year, and a setting for the owners collection of sculpture.
A new and large next door extension that overlooked the garden needed screening. For this, we chose Western Red Cedar, a Canadian native, Thuja plicata. This has been most successful, the trees we found were already 7 metres high, and are sweet smelling, with fresh, bright green foliage. A great advantage of Thuja is that it is happy to be pruned and does not suffer from brown dieback, and the birds love nesting in it too!
In the area of the garden by the church we planted a fruit orchard. The wild flowers and grass are left long in the summer, with mown paths through and around.