I love vertical gardens. But it would be nice if ours plateaued out at some points! @Samantha Powell yours doesn't look that steep in the picture, but it must be, from the top of ours we can see over the top of the house. Your garden is very neat and tidy. Ours is narrow, and there is also a little zig-zagging, which makes interesting perspectives. You can't see up ours, which is just as well, as it is a mess.
@daiboy love the look of your gardens around there, I used to live on the ridge in Leeds, and really liked looking down and over a valley. At the moment a journey down our garden is up! I quite fancy the other way round.
The patio area seems sensible, for pots and flowers. As you journey down, it could become wilder. Just hope you haven't any biters down there. The nature has come out around these parts, and my legs are full of sores.
One thing I like about the slope, is looking down into trees, it's oddly comforting feeling like you are in the canopy, and it's another shift in perspective. One thing I wish I couldn't see from the garden is our house and houses - they make my stomach turn - compared to planting.
Yesterday pm on the Beeb there was one of those programmes with Charlie and the two brothers competing to do a design for a sloping garden. The brothers won and put in levels and left the lowest area as a place for the two boys to play and have a wildlife pond. See if you can find it on i-Player for some inspiration on how to proceed.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
Hi. I have a very steep bank at the front of the house so my wife does not want rhubarb and other veg like pumpkins that could grow down it, any recommendations for what are the best shrubs to plant??
@daiboy - from experience, I'd say tackle a small area at a time, and try not to leave a steep slope bare. If it rains heavily you'll end up with a lot of erosion. I tried to create a wild flower area on a steep bank behind the house, by sowing seed in September. I'd left the dead couch grass roots in place, in the hope they'd stabilise the soil, but the seed didn't germinate before winter and the rain made substantial "runnels" down the 1:1 slope. On the other side of the house in the "proper" garden (wide but shallow - 19m wide but 8m deep) the slope is less steep, around 1:3, down the 8m bit. I gradually terraced bits of it, which worked pretty well - using local stone for the retaining walls.
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
I'm in Abercarn in the south Wales valleys. We're about to start clearing the area of brambles. However I will take the advice doing a bit at a time once the brambles are cut down. I have decided to tier the bottom garden and put raised beds there. The bottom tier doesn't get a lot of sun due to a beautiful huge ash tree. I think there we may keep chickens or something but we'll see. That's a million miles off.
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@daiboy love the look of your gardens around there, I used to live on the ridge in Leeds, and really liked looking down and over a valley. At the moment a journey down our garden is up! I quite fancy the other way round.
The patio area seems sensible, for pots and flowers. As you journey down, it could become wilder. Just hope you haven't any biters down there. The nature has come out around these parts, and my legs are full of sores.
One thing I like about the slope, is looking down into trees, it's oddly comforting feeling like you are in the canopy, and it's another shift in perspective. One thing I wish I couldn't see from the garden is our house and houses - they make my stomach turn - compared to planting.