Addingham couple create a beautiful garden for all seasons

When we moved in the rear garden had no plants at all, just a tired lawn, so we had a blank canvas to work from.

We decided to plant flowers and created herbaceous borders to the left and right of the lawn. We used an old pickaxe left by builders, due to the many pebbles beneath the grass.

The borders have evolved over time, growing in size and shape. At the bottom of the lawn friends built us a medium-sized dry stone walled, raised pond with a small waterfall powered by a pump. We did have fish and frogs but they were taken long ago by a local heron.

The borders have evolved over time

Delphiniums add a bold splash of colour

The pond has various plants including water lilies, water marigolds and watercress which flower each spring and summer.

Against the house we have clematis growing up a wooden balcony we had built, together with a beautiful, wisteria, which grew as high as our chimney before being lopped.

We try to have plants flowering in the garden throughout the year, although December is pretty sparse. In early spring we have several hellebores of various colours, pinks, purples and white. Then the spring bulbs arrive around the garden, mainly in pots, including snowdrops, crocus, scillas, daffodils, hyacinths, tulips and early flowering wallflowers.

Giant poppies add colour

Another view of the garden

The borders have many perennial plants including lupins, delphiniums, hollyhocks, foxgloves, poppies, red crocosmia, phlox, bleeding heart, salvias and sweet peas. This gives the garden flowering plants from spring through to autumn.

We have various climbing roses, honeysuckle, a potato plant - which climbs up our neighbour’s conifer - clematis, jasmine, passion flower and a ceanothus bush which has bright blue flowers in late spring. All these plants give height and structure and are strong growers.

There's a wide variety of plants

In summer we turn to bedding plants mainly in hanging baskets, which always include trailing lobelia, violas and petunias. This year we have planted some begonias from corms in the baskets, which have done well and are half the price of made-up baskets.

We re-use most of the previous year’s potting compost by adding fertilisers such as chicken manure pellets, egg shells and fish, blood and bone fertiliser. This seems to work very well and prolongs the life of the original compost.

We are lucky to have access to free horse manure which we spread on the beds every year in the autumn - hard work but worth it. Our garden is southerly facing and sheltered providing a good environment for the plants to grow.

Much time has gone into creating the garden

At the back of one border we have a bright green leylandii hedge, through which grows the tropaeolum plant which has hundreds of tiny bright red flowers in late spring through the summer.

After flowering it produces beautiful purple berries, the tropaeolum is just about my favourite flower. The star of our front garden is a weeping larch which is a slow growing conifer which is about 20 years old and still only about eight feet tall.

The weeping larch is around 20-years-old (Image: UGC)

We do not have a greenhouse and do not use any form of pesticides, which gives our wildlife a chance, including birds, bees, butterflies and our visiting hedgehog.

We get many of our summer bedding plants from the Riverside Nurseries in Ilkley and enjoy the occasional visit to Holden Clough Nursery near Clitheroe and various other nurseries when we are out and about.

Our garden feels like a peaceful oasis, somewhere to sit, look at the plants and colour and just relax. When family and friends visit for afternoon tea or a barbecue they always want to take a stroll around the garden. Our tip for starting a garden from scratch is to think about the seasons and choose plants that create a garden that has interest and colour throughout the year.