Start of the Year

The start of the year is an exiting time in the garden, a time to plan, a time to plant and a time to start building landscaping projects ready to enjoy in the coming warmer months.
Alas I’m only at the planning stage at the moment and I doubt I will get any further than this before early Spring meaning I will loose out on bare root, and root ball planting opportunities this year. This is regrettable mainly for financial reasons as buying plants this way is significantly less expensive than the alternative of pot grown planting stock....I seem unable to follow my own advice frequently dispensed to clients of “building and planting in the winter, ready to enjoy and maintain and harvest in the growing season”. 
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One pressing project is our driveway. A fairly large area which is at the moment and to be frank a mess. We’ve a number of large tree’s including Cypress, Yew and a very beautiful Magnolia and a reasonably good Beech hedge all of which are breaking up the horrid tarmac which makes the majority of the area. To have such a number of large trees in an amenity area is not practical and given Laylandii are, at least in my view, a horrid blight on the local landscape the decision to have these removed was an easy one. 

Living in a conservation area we had to apply for permission and oddly the local authority placed  TPO's on them.....quite why is it impossible to know but they did give permission for the Yew to be felled, so just before Christmas my team removed the largest Yew and reduced another. I'm now left with possibilities of not only a new, practical and interesting driveway, but also to incorporate garden area, all of which I am exited about. 

This project is by in large designed and I will start the build in the coming months. The build will be documented here together with a “how to guide” which I hope will be useful to anyone who happened to come across this blog. 

​Happy New Year!
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Magnolia × soulangeana