How To Create An Amazing Modern Country Front Garden With Zero Space

Okay, so you've seen the look you love and adore: a long winding path lined with lavender, leading up to a perfect, muted front door....but you have the smallest front garden in the world?

Consider a country-inspired feminine palette of Farrow and Ball Pelt, Dulux Linnet, Farrow and Ball Purbeck Stone, Farrow and Ball Cinder Rose; lavenders look gorgeous on paintwork alongside plenty of green planting, a circular pond wrapped with low box hedging is set off with a ribbon of lavender plants; topiary balls in old pots

Now, front doors I can help you with but I can't, even using my most special Modern Country powers, magic up long winding paths if you have a tiny front garden or no front garden at all....

But, but, BUT what I can do is give you fantastic alternatives that will help give the impression of your dream look in a variety of guises. Let's take a leafy stroll through the Top Ten Ways To Get A Modern Country Front Garden With Zero Space....

1) The humble window box. You only have to walk down a trendy London street to see how far window boxes have come on the Modern Country front. Gone are the twee fussy arrangements and in are crisp topiary, contemporary finishes and gorgeous symmetrical style. On the other end of the spectrum, it's perfectly possible to bring in a gentle touch of lavender here as demonstrated in exquisite style in the image above. 

The contrast of the aged terracotta pots, with the gently swaying lavender flowers alongside the smart black, geometric frame of the window box and the shaped topiary-like planting combines to create a perfect Modern Country exterior.

2) Wreaths aren't only for Christmas, you know. They can look completely scrummy, and introduce that perfect shot of lavender, all year round...

3) Be flexible with the actual planting. Here eryngium (sea holly) and eucalyptus is used in a beautiful wreath to give the same hint of lavender... (and I'm LOVING the Jim Lawrence door knocker!)

4) Many houses have scope for pots by the walls and planting scaling their walls, even if they don't actually have official ownership of the space in front of their front door. Take a walk around many gorgeous streets in the Cotswolds to see this beautifully in action...

Simply pop in a couple of lavender-esque plants into pretty pots and place either side of your gorgeous front door for a quick and cheap way to get the look...

5) Now, the joy of lavender is that it can belong to all different kind of homes so when thinking about your pots, take care...as you can see from these images, the pots themselves creates a very definite feel, whether that's uber contemporary, super rustic or perfectly Modern Country: none of these looks are right or wrong but it's worth spending a little bit of time considering the overall direction that you want the front of your home to have and making sure all design touches are aiming the same way...

6) How's this for a beautiful idea: a little galvanised vase with a simple bouquet of lavender attached to your front door....just be careful if you're a door-slammer. ;-)

7) Of  course, many of you will be blessed with some outside space. Please don't be shy of making the very most of every square foot....

Small spaces, as has been said a million times here on Modern Country Style, can be absolutely the most satisfying to design. It's possible to pack a real punch, even with only a little plot so pick up your pencil and get planning!!

8) Lavender is a fantastic companion plant, one of the very best for Modern Country gardens. Have a play! Don't be afraid of combining lavender with super-sleek topiary...

9) ...or with country-loving roses:

10) And, last but not least, if green-fingered projects really aren't your thing, pick up your paintbrush and go lavender!

I hope, for those of you yearning for long paths lined with lavender, but without the square footage to match, that these ten ideas will fill you with enthusiasm and excitement for your space...and all its glorious potential!

Take Care Till Next Time,

Sarahx

Images via here

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The RHS Companion Guide To Scented Plants By Stephen Lacey: Book Review

After this post on how adding home-grown eucalyptus is a cheap and effective way to give pizazz to any bunch of flowers, it got me thinking once again about scented plants in the garden. I am absolutely crazy about scented flowers. If you are too then The RHS Companion to Scented Plants, the only major reference work on scent and scented flowers that is endorsed by the RHS, authored by Stephen Lacey is one book you won't want to miss.

The Companion To Scented Plants (published by Frances Lincoln), not only contains an extensive list of plants (more on that below), but also gives over the first three chapters (Scent And The Gardener, The Nature Of Scent, and Planning Your Garden) to fantastic ideas about garden designs that are beautiful AND highly scented....a Modern Country Garden paradise!!

The rest of the book acts as a catalogue of scented plants and flowers. However, and let me very clear, this is not a dry, dull reference book. Instead, Stephen Lacey's text will have the olfactory  equivalent to making your mouth water (making your nose run??!!)...

This book reveals aroma as the intensely personal but often-missing ingredient of beautiful gardens. If you spent the long summer evenings in your garden enjoying al fresco suppers.....but didn't spend time with your head buried in deliciously fragrant flowers then, please, buy The RHS Companion to Scented Plants and set yourself that delightfully achievable and utterly pleasurable goal for next year!

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How To Turn Any Bunch Of Flowers Into An Absolute Show-Stopper...

This is how easy it is (and how cheap) to get a crowd-stopping bouquet of flowers.

Take one single large bunch of lilies. These are from Sainsbury's.

And then here is my star tip...

****Add eucalyptus from your garden.****

We grow Eucalyptus Gunnii for this very purpose. Lots of people are put off by horror stories of the enormously towering plant that Eucalyptus can become but in fact it responds superbly well to being coppiced, which means cut back to the ground, every few years, in late winter. 

This creates a multi-stemmed bush, rather than a towering tree, and allows the plant to produce more of its beautiful grey-green juvenile foliage. And its ths gorgeous, glaucous leafiness that both glams up and bulks up any bouquet. A perfect double whammy!

Have a go and let me know how you get on...

All images: Modern Country Style

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Leopoldina Haynes' Small Garden

If you thought things couldn't get any better after that delicious Modern Country house tour of Leopoldina Haynes' home, you'd be wrong, wrong, wrong! Come on outside into the very small but perfectly formed garden, reached through the back of the kitchen double doors, and see what I mean.

Leopoldina Haynes' tiny garden has that heavenly mix of topiary and soft planting, which makes it utterly eye-catching and utterly, utterly Modern Country.

Designed in conjunction with Claire Mee Designs, the garden walls are lined with shutterboard cladding, painted in Dulux Chalky Downs 3, a delicious, chalky taupe shade. 

This is the predominant paint colour (in all its forms) used inside Leopoldina's house so brings a sense of continuity between the two spaces, as well as introducing a light and airy feeling, which seems to  enlarge the small space.

Leopoldina Haynes' garden has a limited but beautiful selection of plants, with a strong Mediterranean theme, in a tight palette of green and white, with the odd hint of colour

....namely: white hydrangeas...

rosemary....

myrtle.... {make sure you clock that vintage garden fork and spade!}

English roses...

fig trees....

olive trees...

cyclamen.....

and lavender, in a decorative concrete planter....

...placed lovingly beneath a vintage French mirror.

The table and chairs are from high-end Dutch company Free Line.

The floor material is river stone and the raised section is York stone.

Leopoldina Haynes has used a variety of cushions to make the seating more comfortable, in palest mushroom checks and stripes.

I love the idea of using baskets in soft-grey rattan for planting. These have been simply lined with plastic bin bags, with their bottoms  pierced for drainage. 

The hydrangeas look especially beautiful with this treatment - Modern and Country all at the same time. Yummy!

Be still, my beating heart!

And the topiary? Oh, the topiary...

Some box balls (buxus) are placed methodically between each of the five olive trees...

and others given the same divine grey rattan basket treatment...

Looking back into the house, Leopoldina Haynes has used a darker shade of Dulux Chalky Downs on the window frames, which has been echoed in the colour of the wooden planters...

This garden, though teeny-tiny small, has almost magically inviting properties, enticing you out on a summer's evening....

Modern Country garden heaven, no?

Images via: Leopoldina Haynes and Claire Mee on Pinterest

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How To Use Topiary In A Modern Country Garden Part 2

Welcome to our Modern Country Garden! 

Won't you sit down and make yourself at home?

I loved our Country garden...

but the bulbs and perennials that look so beautiful 

from March to maybe October at a push....

...look rather more forlorn come the end of autumn, 

and certainly all through winter. 

So...what's a Modern Country girl (or boy!) to do?

One word: topiary! A Modern Country classic!

Topiary (particularly Box or Privet) needs clipping back to its basic shape once or twice a year, with secateurs or special topiary shears, in early or late summer. Now, this sounds finickity and tricksome, I know, but, truly, it's not....particularly if you stick to the simpler shapes {no elephants here!}. Balls, lollipops and pyramids simply need a bit of a haircut and clipped, stem by deliciously ever-verdant stem, back to their desired shape. This is made far easier if you buy them from a reputable shop or nursery (we ordered these Box Balls from B&Q), as the original shape is so perfect.

My plan has been to create a Modern Country Winter Garden in the first third of our outdoor space, as it's clearly visible from our house. I chose to use topiary as it's great for creating visual barriers but still allowing plenty of light through. Long thin gardens like ours need dividing into a series of 'rooms' and that's what I'm creating here. At last, a beautiful all-season view from our kitchen window.

Although my initial thinking was to plant my Topiary Balls, I rather like the terracotta-style plastic pots they arrived in (I know terracotta looks great but I find that it very often cracks in very cold weather) so I'm keeping the plants in those for now, though they'll need potting on in a couple of years to allow for growth. As long as they are kept well-fed and watered, they will flourish. This also gives me the opportunity to shift them around during the year.

When choosing plant pots for Box Balls, try choosing ones that are a slightly smaller than the diameter of the sphere for a neat Modern Country take on topiary. This is particularly effect in groupings.

I wanted to give the section that is closest to the kitchen window a bit of an oomph. It needed more structure, a bit more Modern Country Style to underpin the summer loveliness.

I've moved our table and chairs outside the back door.

And I've lined the four Box Topiary Balls in a row to define the space further. I'll probably be under-planting these with a succession of lip-smackingly luscious bulbs (narcissus, tulips, alliums...?). Bulbs and topiary go together like custard and cherry pie, don't you think? 

As the mood takes me, I can switch the outer two Boxwood Balls to stand like sentinels at the rose arch, leading my eye enticingly further up the garden.

I have to tell you about my experience with B&Q, when I ordered these four Box Balls from their website. They arrived super fast and I was all of an excited flutter....when disaster struck! Aaargh! I noticed that one of the plastic pots was completely split, and some of the roots of the Buxus had been exposed and damaged in transit. 

I shot off an email to their customer services, and received a lovely reply apologising, along with the promise of a new topiary plant....B&Q were true to their word. A perfect replacement specimen arrived the very next day.

Impressed doesn't even begin to cover it. 

Plus, our cats steer completely clear so I'm a very happy girlie indeed!

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