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Creating a family-friendly space
The Easter holidays have made me think carefully about the need for a family friendly garden, as my son's football-playing has managed to scuff up the lawn and flatten some of the emerging plants in my borders.
But how can you create a space where you can enjoy adult time without tripping over sandpits, swings and paddling pools, while protecting your beautiful borders from the dreaded football?
Award-winning garden designer and mother-of-two Bunny Guinness knows only too well the space that children need to play but the havoc they can wreak among your carefully-planted borders.
"We seem to veer between extremes," she observes. "Either the whole garden becomes merely an area to contain plastic climbing frames and the like that make any attempt to create an attractive garden impossible, or else any hint of family fun is banished, sacrificed to the cause of a garden that is purely for admiring."
But it is possible to create a garden for both adults and children, she insists, if you follow some basic design principles.
"If you can honeypot an area and give them their space so they have privacy from you and you from them, that always helps. Then if they make a mess then so be it.
"Their area may have a lot of tough planting, maybe ivy as ground cover so they can play among it, big bamboos or shrubby willows that you can coppice down. Don't spend a fortune on fulfilling the needs of one age because they will get bored with it quite quickly."
Take your children to other gardens to see what they like and see if you can adapt their ideas to their own space.
Trampolines have become increasingly popular, but if you don't want it to be a predominant feature then sink it into the ground. You'll need a mini-digger to dig out the earth - and could then use that to create a mound around the trampoline hole and plant hedging around it.
"In specifications I've always allowed for a sump for drainage, but I've never had to put one in," says Guinness, a regular on BBC Radio 4's Gardeners' Question Time and author of the bestselling Family Gardens.
"A sunken trampoline is not just visual - it's also safer because the children don't have as far to fall."
Sandpits are also easy to make by digging a hole, laying a permeable lining which allows water to drain (provided you have free-draining soil) and filling it with playpit sand. It will be bigger and better than any portable sandpit and you can cover it with camouflage nets from army surplus stores when not in use. Put a drainable paddling pool next to the sand so the children can play with sand and water together.
Keeping an adult area there will need to be rules in place, she says.
"There needs to be no-go zones. In my front courtyard where I have box-edged beds, the children knew if the ball went into the beds that was it, it stayed there. If you have certain ground rules they will understand the reason why.
"A friend of mine only lets her children play football in the winter because she has a lot of herbaceous plants, which are below ground at that time. Balls can cause a problem, but if you have room for a piece of grass to accommodate, say, French cricket, that's great.
"You just need to design the layout so that you haven't got your delphiniums on top of your French cricket. If you haven't got room then take the ball to the park."
When you are planning your family friendly garden, remember that children are going to have different needs from one year to the next.
"Keep the garden dynamic," she advises. "Don't think that once you've designed it, that's it. They will move on and will probably be wanting something new each year."
:: Family Gardens, by Bunny Guinness, is published by David & Charles, price 12.99.
BEST OF THE BUNCH - Magnolia
I adore magnolias, with their spectacular waxy flowers in shades of pink, cream and white. There's an abundance of them where I live, thanks to the acid soil, although there are types which will withstand alkaline soil including M. grandiflora, M. stellata and M. sieboldii. They must be planted where they have room to grow without being pruned, so that their graceful shape is retained.
As well as the large varieties such as M. grandiflora, which can grow to 18m (60ft) producing huge, fragrant, creamy-white flowers from late summer to autumn, there are also smaller, but no less impressive types including M. x loebneri 'Leonard Messel', with its star-shaped, lilac-pink spring flowers, and M. soulangiana, a spreading bush which can reach around 3m (10ft) high, its goblet-shaped flowers appearing in April before the leaves, in shades of rosy red to white.
Magnolias like full sun or light shade and the soil will need to be enriched with plenty of organic matter before planting.
GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT - Rocket (Eruca sativa)
This deliciously peppery salad leaf has become trendy in the last decade in restaurants serving it with melted goat's cheese or with pasta or as the bed for some exotic 'tower' on a plate. It's is so expensive in the shops and yet it's so easy to grow, so have a go.
You can sow it successionally from early spring until very late summer in shallow drills, harvesting it as a cut-and-come-again crop. The one problem is that it runs to seed quickly in summer, with the leaves becoming tough and coarse, so to keep up the supply, wait until one crop is showing a couple of leaves and sow a few more. Rocket likes moisture-retentive soil and some shade. It will need watering in dry spells. Try wild or Turkish rocket, which are more bolt-resistant than leaf rocket.
THREE WAYS TO ... Make the most of your shed
1. Put a concrete ramp up to the door frame for barrows and mowers to save you having to lug heavy equipment up and down shed steps.
2. Turn it into a feature using coloured wood stain, adding window boxes, trellis and climbing plants such as roses and honeysuckle to adorn it.
3. If you are buying a new shed, decide what you want and then, if space allows, double it. Most sheds are untidy because there isn't enough room for all the equipment in them.
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK
:: When the soil has warmed up sufficiently under cloches, sow broad beans, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, lettuce, early peas, spinach and turnip.
:: Protect peaches from rain to avoid peach leaf curl fungus.
:: Net blackcurrants against bullfinches which eat the buds.
:: Sow winter cabbage, sprouting broccoli and leek in a seedbed.
:: Lift, divide and replant chives and sorrel.
:: Replace rockery plants.
:: Rake the lawn to remove old thatch and you may also be able to mow.
:: Plant lilies outside if the weather is favourable, otherwise pot them up for planting later.
:: Ventilate the greenhouse on sunny days, but close it up almost completely at night.
:: Sow cucumbers, tomatoes and melons for growing in a cool greenhouse.
:: Begin liquid feeding indoor potted plants.
DON'T MISS
...The chance to take part in this year's Springwatch and maybe even be on TV. Intrepid wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan will be touring the country for the next month in search of members of the public with stories to tell about the special wildlife sights they regularly see in their region.
It may be that your life has been transformed by wildlife or your job gives you a unique view of wildlife. If you have a wildlife wonder to share, go to www.bbc.co.uk/springwatch and click on WILD THINGS, which is the name of Gordon's programme, beginning on Monday, May 26 on BBC Two. He wants to hear your story.
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Weather for Bedford
Tuesday 14 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 5 C to 8 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 4 C to 10 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: North west
