Watching Garden of the Year on More4
I’m thinking, where do those garden owners put all the STUFF that a gardener leaves lying about, puts down and forgets about, dumps, loses, temporarily leaves somewhere, and doesn’t know what to do with? Where are all the opened bags of grit, the empty terracotta pots, the buckets, Where is all that stuff???
Yes I’m lucky to have a shed and here it is but not everything can go in a shed.
inside of the shed
Nooks and crannies
I’d like to show you the lovely little places in this garden that solve all those problems above.
My absolute favourite place, a dumping place if you like, is just next to the shed where I throw all the green stuff from the back garden.
It’s in effect an open compost pile although I’ve never used any of it, I just leave it and it piles up and goes down with the weather and the seasons. I like it and don’t think it’s an eyesore at all. Surely you have to have somewhere to chuck green stuff and in a small town garden there’s no “out of the way” corner to hide the pile.
Pots and bits of pots are popped in this back corner and I think they look rather attractive just as they are.
At the back door I keep containers of seaweed plant food and a bucket full of dirty water. I always need a bucket of water and the plant food is extra handy. After years of garden pottering one learns not to put everything away tidily every two minutes because you only have to go and get it again.
Below is the front door area which for some would have matching olive trees in wooden planters but I find some sad gloves and another bucket much more useful.
There’s always a mess under the bird feeders so I have temporarily solved that by leaving my bags of grit and compost rather artfully on the ground around the pole. And another handy bucket of course.
This is the back gate which I don’t use much so can’t resist putting big awkward things in the space in front of it. I curse myself when I need to open the door but the space is so inviting. In a small garden you really do have to use the space for more than one thing. Space to open a door easily is too much of a luxury.
Heavy full bags of stuff have to stay out the front where they fall when I push them out of the car. There’s no way I can move them until they are only half full so it’s bucket by bucket to start with. As yet no one has pinched them.
Surprise
Since starting this blog this morning, a foreign TV company mailed me asking to come and film the garden next weekend. Sounds fun ……….will I be as blasé about my nooks and crannies? How many buckets and bits of stuff will I be putting out of sight I wonder. I will let you know.
Thankyou for reading so far and happy autumn gardening to all.
Julie
It just isn’t a good idea to “hide” every thing. >>>>Now….where did I put that pot?
Ha!
We have watched and enjoyed the Garden of the Year programmes also – though the garden designer presenter irritated me more and more as the series progressed!
Re the “invisibility” of all the bits and pieces in the gardens: I reckon those filming behave as we all do when taking photographs of gardens, our own or those we visit – we seek out the beautiful and pretty and avoid shots of the compost heaps, the abandoned hosepipe, the weedy patch etc. When we have a camera in our hands we are inclined to be kind and those who filmed the series were of that ilk.
Here, I have a big compost area which serves to hold the wheelbarrows, piles of leafmould, logs, bamboo canes etc etc. Then, there is the shed for the lawnmowers etc and the garage comes into service also, and two areas beside the glasshouse – actually, there’s a lot of rubbish in my garden and lots of places full of rubbish! Who cares!
Interesting topic! My gardening gloves and secateurs are always inside my house just by my back patio doors. Can’t stand having to walk into the kitchen all the time to find them! Bird food lives in tubs in tiny utility area. Don’t have any sheds (used too when we moved in but they were in pretty bad shape so we got rid). Just use garage for tools and buckets and things. (Garage has back door as well as front so is very handy!). Compost is left by patio as like you said it’s too heavy so use buckets too.
Ah yes, just inside the door, secateurs and gloves. As we have no side access I walk thru the house to get things from the shed so try and stash things in the front to save me traipsing through the house 50 times. I still end of running thru holding a dripping wet pot or a plant I’ve just dug up dropping soil as I go. The eternal pottering eh? I can’t believe there are any ordinary gardeners with real gardens who aren’t just like us and make a mess wherever they go! thank you so much for your nice comment and very best wishes, Julie
I can get away with pretty much anything on my allotment but at home I get it in the neck pretty quickly if anything is left where it shouldn’t be. What is the point being poison neat when it’s only going to get messed up again a day or two later. I’ve learned to be pretty creative at hiding things out of site but my instincts are heavily against throwing anything away when it might come in useful.
Who exactly is giving you such a hard time if anything is left in the wrong place?????? I do throw things out, leaving them out for passing neighbours but you can bet I wish I hadn’t some time later. managing space is such an emotional thing isn’t it. sometimes I want the garden to feel uncluttered and sometimes I don’t mind if it’s a jumble mess. all in my head I think. thank you so much for commenting and best wishes, julie
Yes I have a place behind the shed where all the prunings and dead stuff is chucked. It all breaks down over the months and is hidden from view. As well as this, at the top of the garden I have a small container veg area which also incorporates all those plants which need rescuing and might survive if properly nurtured as well as my pots of bulbs from last year which I’m hopeful will flower again in the Spring. Not tidy or beautiful but a very important part of the garden.
Super. I also feel these cosy places where we chuck stuff must be such a wonderful habitat for creatures, undisturbed and full of nutrition. Now pots of bulbs are too bulky and heavy for me to keep for the following year so I have to empty them and start again , storing the bulbs in the shed till autumn. thank you so much for commenting and best wishes, Julie
I love your blog – it’s so real. I also use the side of the shed for pots and random bits and pieces. I’ve never mastered the art of neatly dealing with left-over irrigation pipe – it sits in great big ugly circles precariously hanging off nails in the shed.
My great aunt had a beautiful garden. When asked about all of the work it must take she said she had a trick – she made sure her design included a space behind tallish bedding plants and her fence to throw ALL of her prunings, rakings, grass cuttings etc. She also had a row of plants hiding an area of garden “stuff”. She had the luxury of space but I’ve always remembered that hint and applied in it much smaller gardens.
Now that is a good idea we can all use and I have done that in some places, just throw green stuff as far at the back as I can. how lovely to have a great aunt. I don’t think I had one and you don’t hear that description theses days much do you. bet wishes, julie
Having a VERY small garden, I found a solution for a very small shed to go with it, it’s along the side of the house, an area which we can’t see and gets no sun. Perfect for a 2m x 60cm doorless shed, so much better than nothing and taking away no space on which I can plant.
what a great solution and being doorless, even better so you can jut reach out for things. thank you for that idea. best wishes, Julie
Your post made me feel much better about my own garden pottering and creation of dumping places which are far less picturesque
than yours! I don’t even have the excuse of owning a small garden and have an array of sheds and lots of possible places to put
stuff out of the way. I have become more and more annoyed at all the pristine garden-designed images that we are bombarded with.
They are all taken when flowers are at their best and never show, for example, plants that are dying back. They rarely show one area
in all four seasons. It tends to leave the ordinary gardener struggling to achieve some sort of unattainable perfection. There should be
more “behind the scenes” posts like yours.
Thankyou so much Helen for saying my post made you feel better – that really is a compliment. I am fed up with all those silly ‘perfect’ gardens on TV aka expensive gardens for people who never do any gardening. There’ no perfect garden is there, any more than there’s a perfect marriage or a perfect house or a perfect job. We just do what we can with what we’ve got and luckily for us it’s just fine. best wishes to you, Julie