Low Maintenance, High Expectations

There were quite a few important requirements in purchasing my first house. One of them being that the garden should be small. I had no interest in gardening then, you see.

As long as there was abit of lawn and room for a patio, I would be happy. This ideal couldn't have been more different when looking for my second home. The house had to be bigger, but the garden had to be huge. My passion for gardening had now taken over me. It was completely clouding my judgement and the decision would come to bite me in the backside a couple of years later. This dream garden has high demands you see. Its both financially draining and time consuming. The financial burden makes the time consuming issue to be two-fold however. It means working more hours to earn more money, meaning less time to create the dream garden. Finding an answer has taken all year, but with clever low maintenance ideas, I think I may have worked out a way to achieve the dream.

I now have various short lists of planting possibilities. The list uses a plants merits from a care perspective, against its outlay cost. The lower the maintenance requirement, the higher up the list the plant gets. But, the less appealing the plant material is compared to others in the list, the more it is dropped back down the list. By Christmas I hope to have the list finalised as I need to use the 'bare-root financial loophole' that the winter period allows. The twenty five tonnes of topsoil have gone some way into setting out half of the garden. Now, I need the plants!!