One doesn’t always get what one wishes for. Perhaps that’s a good thing as it pushes us out of our comfort zone.

I’d wished for a large flat garden with great views. The house, and all its verandas, was great, or could be, so the compromise was the garden – not flat, not large, with a huge leylandii hedge screening the landscape beyond. Now to make a garden that lived up to the house.

The constraints were the budget, the time and effort. And the fact that I was concurrently renovating a house and garden in Johannesburg

As we saw in the last post, the pool and outdoor kitchen area were now in place.

Now to dig up the drive and then create paths to draw one into the scattered pieces of garden and, importantly, reasons to venture along those paths.

I sketched the plans, which were then interpreted by landscaper Julien Bironneau of Jardistyle. The husband submitted his requests – roses, roses and more roses (and he picked them in all the colours of the rainbow. Note to oneself, lots of mellow tones of grey, green and silver as contrast).

Formal box-edged beds by the house, where the road was before; diagonal borders of roses with diagonal borders of meadow flowers – the meadow flowers were later replaced by a formal layout of lavender, santolina and other drought tolerant plants. The focal point would be a stone fountain in a local style.

So this :

…. in time became this, with views also opened up by the removal of the leylandii.

Very colourful in high summer, yet retains its structure in other seasons. (Late November below).

Other focal points/areas of interest were created, a rose arbour (nice for sundowners), a potager, a South African style “boma’ for watching the stars by a firepit, as well as many benches.

As gardeners well know, a garden is never finished.

But I think it’s now time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of the labour…. after the weeding perhaps.