Front Garden ~ A summary

Front Garden

So far I haven't had much, if anything, to say about our front garden.
It is quite small just alongside the driveway in front of the house.

We have, so far, resisted the temptation to brick it, concrete it or tarmac it and especially not gravel it or shale it.
We have kept it with its square of grass with borders around; when we moved in there were 9 huge orange Mombresia plants around the lawn.... and nothing else!! We think there had been a tree in the middle but the only sign of that was the slight hollow in the ground.
I dug those up and then used to plant regimented rows of Salvia & Lobelia or French Marigolds but this proved to be a lot of work as the soil in the front is quite sandy and so the plants needed huge amounts of watering in the summer.
We planted a Winter Flowering Cherry many years ago and then surrounded it with cyclamen and then replanted the borders with small spreading Geraniums, various Fuschias and eventually some summer bulbs, like small alliums.
There are also a large number of white 'Bluebells', English, of course, another import from my parents' Devon garden. We have Snowdrops and a few Daffodils.
One of the borders, alongside the drive, was grassed over at some point so we stepped out onto grass from the passenger door rather than onto mud!
The border under the window was part turfed to provide a small bed which has some beautiful white Hyacinths for the early Spring then for the last 4 years has had Californian Poppies right through the Summer into Autumn.
Three years ago the Cherry Tree had grown too big; well not the actual tree but the roots!! We had 4" diameter roots heading straight for the house!! So we took it down and dug it out and replanted a baby one. We returfed the lawn at the same time as many of the roots had been quite shallow and messed the lawn up.
We like the Cherry Trees very much and will just watch this one.
I will sort a few pages of photos to show the front garden in the depths of this last very cold and snowy Winter and then some of the flowers through the Spring and into Summer.