Selecting trees for a west facing 8x5m family garden
This west-facing 8x5m family garden was causing a number of challenges for my clients when they reached out for some help on what to plant and where. Being west facing, the back of their home was incredibly hot in summer and there was no shade at all. A large (unused shed) took up a great deal of useable room, and the astroturf was making the summer sun harder to manage, absorbing and retaining heat through the day and then throwing it back up onto the house in the evening. Some former raised beds were rotting and the majority of the existing plants weren’t thriving (or indeed dying) as they weren’t in the right place or suitable for the garden’s soil type.
The family were willing to strip everything back to the fences, replace the astroturf with real lawn and start from scratch, so we had a brilliant opportunity to make this small garden a fantastic space, starting with trees.
The garden before.
As with most city gardens, the outdoor space is very overlooked, so creating some privacy was going to be important. The clients liked the idea of a wild, natural looking planting scheme and wanted to incorporate as many trees as possible, ensuring that they wouldn’t get too big and cause damage to their patio or their neighbours gardens in the future. We incorporated two multi-stemmed Amelanchier × lamarckii trees, one in a new bed in front of the kitchen window and one in the back bed by the fence, which after a few years, would provide screening and privacy for both the house and garden, as well as year-round interest. Amelanchier × lamarckii are fantastic trees, with blossom in spring, purple berries in summer and gorgeous red foliage in autumn and they don’t get too big (around 4m in height), so wouldn’t over-crowd the garden in the future.
To save money, we sourced two young bare-rooted trees from Crocus for only £40 each. Planting the bare-rooted versions in the autumn, rather than buying potted trees in summer saved around £30 per tree.
The Amelanchier × lamarckii in berry in the summer, two years after planting as a bare-rooted tree, having put on over half a meter of growth in that time.
The client also had three trees in pots which we decided to incorporate into the planting plan to optimise what they had and save money. A beautiful Acer palmatum ‘Going Green’ was added to the shadier side of the garden, while a dwarf cherry tree (Prunus avium ‘Stella’) and a dwarf olive tree (which had both been gifts to the family several years before) were planted on the south-facing side.
To make the most of the fence space above the dwarf trees without attaching anything to the fence on the right hand side (which was owned by the neighbour), a 2.2m metal arch from Suttons was framed around the olive tree, planted with a climbing kiwi berry (Actinidia arguta 'Issai') to bring more edibles into the small space.
The dwarf olive tree framed by the arch and the climbing kiwi berry Actinidia arguta 'Issai'.
Acer palmatum ‘Going Green’.