Hello m’lovelys and yes I am back again to talk some more gardening! I thought it would time to talk about my front garden. I’ve found front gardens are usually forgotten about and sometimes neglected however, I am a big fan of a lovely front garden.

So for those you don’t know me personally, me and my better half moved into a house in Edinburgh in June last year and both the front and back gardens were just simply overgrown with weeds (even much so, my other half has made it his personal mission to rid our gardens of weeds).

To give you some perspective, this is what we were initially dealing with…

Now, the bushes to the front of the garden are what the developers of the houses put in and now it is summer, they have bloomed and look really pretty with some pink flowers however, when this was taken in roughly August/September 2016, they just didn’t suit how we wanted the garden to look. Then as you can see towards the window is just completely grass and weeds.

So, the intense weeding begins! We pretty much completely reset the garden, took out all the grass/plants/weeds so we were just left with a patch of mud in front of our house (it was very tiring but totally worth it). Then we had to decide on what we actually wanted to fill this space with! From the photo below you can see that we don’t have any access to the back garden around the house only through so we wanted a ‘low maintenance front garden.’

You can see in the photo above the look we were going for. The plants we decided to use are:

Cupressus macrocarpa wilma or Goldcrest – We used these 4 trees at front because eventually they should grow ~300 cm high and ~90 cm wide to hopefully give us some privacy for our living room. They are also aromatic and have that amazing bright lemon foliage all year. They are low maintenance and need next to no pruning. Pests can affect Goldcrest trees however, pruning makes them more resistant;

Lavandula angustifolia or English Lavender – I absolutely love lavender, talk to anyone who knows me. I love the smell, I love it in cakes, I love it in tea, I just can’t get enough of the stuff. So much so, I couldn’t not have it in my front garden! It will probably make its way round to the back garden eventually but I may choose a different variety. Apart from the fact they smell amazing, they can also grow ~45 cm high and ~60 cm wide making them lovely bushes. Another reason why we chose them is because they are compact, grow upright and are an evergreen shrub. I love the grey/green leaves they have and then in summer they produce such lovely deep purple flowers.

Calluna vulgaris or the common heather (but nothing common about these guys!) – When heather blooms I think they look so beautiful and radiant. Coming home to a vibrant, colourful garden is a lovely feeling. They can grow up to 50 cm tall and wide and have narrow, small evergreen leaves. We have a mixture of pink, purple and yellow flowering heather’s at the moment. They are also quite robust plants making them easier to care for, rarely have any issues with pests and only have issues with diseases in hot climates so here in Edinburgh, we should be completely fine.

The grass we used was 4 rectangular lawn turfs from B&Q (which were very difficult to find at the end of August) and started to root quite quickly. We haven’t had many issues with bald spots thankfully, but nothing lawn seeds/fertilizer hasn’t helped with.

These were planted as the plan below in an alternative sequence to give a bit of colour in between the lavender plants. We then covered the surrounding soil in black weed control/landscape fabric and cut holes to allow the lavender and heather through to stop any other weeds coming up. The plants were then surrounded by bark chips to help with protecting the plants over winter against frost and I think it gives the front garden a nice look.

We could then see our efforts have been worth it. The whole process took us a couple of weekends and many more trips to B&Q than I would care to admit but we got there. This was our first attempt at any sort of ‘proper’ gardening in our new home and I am more than thrilled with how it turned out. Just goes to show anyone can do it!

So guys, that is all from me this week. This was definitely an enjoyable gardening and experience and I can’t wait to properly get my hands on our back garden! As usual, any questions or comments please chat to me, I love talking about gardening! Find me on twitter here – @thehortchemist.

Till next time!