Planning a greenhouse

At Gardener’s World Live last year one of the things I was keen to look at, apart from all the show gardens and beautiful borders, was greenhouses. We don’t have one here yet, and I’m missing it - pottering about at the greenhouse staging in the garage is ok, but the garage isn’t ideal for germinating seeds, and I really could do with a light, sheltered space for some of our plants to over winter to give them the best chance.

Not too big, not too small

I don’t want a huge greenhouse, though I’ve already doubled the size I first thought of! And I do want to integrate it into our overall garden design.

In our previous house I had the standard 6x8 aluminium Rhino greenhouse, and it was great - but as I’ve said my plans for this garden are a bit smaller. Originally I was looking at a 2x4 patio greenhouse, but given that it needs to be two foot from any boundary for maintenance, that seemed a lot of space for not very much greenhouse at all.

And so I upscaled my tentative plans to a 6x4 - but also preferring the black frame, rather than aluminium. Of course, all of this is just plans at the moment - though I did come dangerously close to buying one of the show greenhouses in one of the sales, but in the end I resisted as I wanted our plans to be a bit more developed first.

Testing it out for size

So would a 6x4 greenhouse work in our space? Well as there’s nothing else really in our garden, apart from the trellis around the heat pump and the small crab apple tree, the answer is clearly a yes, But would it work how I wanted it too, where I envisaged it - or would it dominate the garden?

I decided to try it out using bamboo canes and string. So this visualisation spent a fortnight or so in place in our garden last summer, and no doubt any neighbours that spotted it clearly must have thought we’d lost the plot.

But it worked, well visually of course, not as an actual greenhouse!

It was easy (and easier than it looks in the photo) to see its footprint, how high it would come up the wall, how far it would come into the garden - and most importantly, how dominant it would be from the house. Putting it directly opposite our lounge windows might not seem the most obvious positioning, but I’m hoping it will also help keep it tidy and on the prettier side. I fully intend to retain the greenhouse staging in the garage for the real functional work, and use the greenhouse for what it does best - providing a sheltered growing space.

Of course I spent the time that it was up, looking out of every window to check what it looked like from that vantage point - and I was happy, until of course my temporary structure collapsed a little. But by then it had done its job and confirmed this is the size and location for me.

Now only if the rest of planning the garden was that easy - but more on that another day!

My garden in February

I’ll admit to very little garden activity again this month, other than stopping and taking more photos - though I’m hopeful that in the next month there’ll be much more actual gardening happening. But until then, let’s look back at February, when my garden has started to wake up.

The snowdrops, which I ended last month’s post with, have continued to develop - it seems these are the tallest of the two clumps I planted last Spring, and clearly I wanted to see these as I planted them closest to the house. The other clump have made an appearance but there’s not been as many as this. I suspect that both clumps with be even better next year.

It was great to catch the sun on this part of the garden early on in the month, especially at a time when sighting the sun was a rarity. I think I’ve identified the main shrub (bottom left) as a daphne - I’ll have to double check that when it flowers though - but the sun on its leaves, and the contrast of the sun and shadows on the hebe next to it was really uplifting.

Elsewhere in the garden the hellebores have been doing their thing. I’m especially pleased to see this maroon one flower - it’s one we brought with us from London and which originated from my FIL’s garden. I’d taken the plunge and potted it into the border, just along from the cream hellebore which was already here. I thought I’d lost this one, and it still doesn’t have a huge amount of leaves - but clearly I haven’t.

It’s great to have a dark and light hellebore almost next to each other and both enjoying the sun. In our previous garden we had the dusky pink sort, and at some point I might add to my hellebore collection.

You may have already seen in other posts that we had a unexpected pheasant visitor to our garden this month - I’m including it here too, as it really made me smile - and wasted about thirty minutes of our day watching its antics. Aren’t the colours wonderful, and how like the brick wall are they?

There’s also been much bulb activity in my pots. The tulips have started to unfurl their leaves in their temporary spot alongside the garage. One pot seems to have developed some moss over the winter, and another now seems to be sporting four small holly seedlings which I’m not sure where they’ve come from. I think I might try and transplant them to see if they continue to grow as they could potentially be useful longer term, and well, who doesn’t like free plants?

I did have a wry smile later in the month when I checked on the tulips again. The one with the mossy pot has dealt with it in the only way it could - and grown through it. I’m loathed to remove its mossy duvet just yet as I can imagine the weather might be a bit of a shock, but I think I’ll probably need to remove it at some point to give the tulip’s stability its best shot.

Getting the bin in the other day (oh the glamour!) I noticed the sun on this Red Robin shrub and couldn’t help but take a snap or two - the forming flowers reminded me of coral in both their form and colour.

The other colour that’s arrived in the garden this month is the fresh lime green of the euphorbias. These are still contained in the pot that brought them from our London garden, and I still think that’s the best way of dealing with them. I’m hoping to pair them with some flowering tulips again this year - if the timings work out.

I don’t yet have flowering daffodils, and it is still quite early for them, but I think these two pots by the gate are the likeliest to flower first, and I can’t wait.

In my herb planter by the back door things have been pretty sparse over the winter. I cut both the mints back and I’m waiting for them to come back with extra vigour; the flat leaf parsley has continued to provide throughout the winter and that’s been a first for me - though I often forget its there, which isn’t so good! But it’s the oregano that’s currently the star with it’s little cabbage like growth taking up a wider area than the original plant (which was close to where the plant label is), and I can’t wait to see how this goes, and how we can use it in the kitchen too.

My rosemary is a tale of two plants; the older rosemary which we brought with us and suffered with wind damage but then recovered enough to plant in the outer border didn’t make it through the winter, sadly. However the newer plant is thriving. Clearly its a different variety as I never saw a flower on the older plant, ever - but this one looks as if it will deliver plenty of those, and plenty of rosemary too. I suspect that at some point I’ll be taking a cutting or two from this one to increase my rosemary chances in the future.

Thanks for joining me for this month’s update, you can read all the posts in this series, and join me next month to see how my garden continues to grow!

My garden in January

Another short winter garden post this month understandably as most of the time we’ve spent in the garden is either walking to the car or emptying the bins - but I have enjoyed viewing the garden from the house.

And with frosts like these it’s hardly surprising is it?

Thankfully the plants seem to have taken the wintery weather pretty well - though it looks as if I’ve lost the sickly rosemary which I planted in the outside border, I’d hoped it would be able to turn itself around out of the wind, but it was not to be. The other plant that’s looking decidedly dodgy is the one midway in the border below (to the right of the three concrete balls). It’s got a variegated leaf and it really doesn’t look too happy - if it makes it, and I’m hopeful it may, then I think I’ll pop it into a pot and see how it does, as maybe the rootball is restricted somehow.

We had a large leaf blowing around our garden, and neither MOH or I could work out if it was actually a leaf or some cardboard. It turned out to be a very large leaf indeed - I’ve not seen other leaves like this, so I wonder how far it had blown.

The pots of daffodils and tulips are starting to do their thing and poke their shoots through the surface. I was glad to have spotted this as a couple of the tulip pots were double stacked, which clearly wouldn’t have been a good thing - though I’m sure the tulips would have tried their bendy best to seek out the light and grow!

Last March I’d bought some snowdrops in the green and had planted them in the border which we look out over from the house, and was wondering where they’d got to. Towards the end of the month I spotted some potential snowdrop activity, then overnight a single snowdrop appeared.

Since then this one has been joined by a few more, and the second clump is also showing signs of growth - hopefully they’ll really come into their own during February (and of course in the years ahead), but they are a good reminder that spring is on its way, however slowly that may feel at times.