Paving the garden

After the rockery, it was time to pave my Scottish garden. I already had my trusty plan, where the paving was marked in orange

and this is it, in real life

The paving stones are currently resting on the earth/old gravel, whilst I decide if that's exactly where they will stay. Better to live with something for a week or two, than to bed in cement straight away - and then be stuck with it, forever!

However, even with the paving where it is, I can still plant some of the items I bought - and here you can see a few in place.

Trollius (globeflower) by the water feature:

The water feature is a steel construction, coated with a special chemical, that reacts to the water where you live; rusting to give a protective layer. Each one will be different, as the chemical composition of an area's water is different. As you can see, ours will be a lovely shade of orange.

Around by the rockery, we have a few more little plants in - and you can see some of the statuary we brought with us, from Essex.

Eventually, all of the gravel will be the lighter coloured one - and then, we wait for the plants to grow and fill up the spaces.
Watching Chelsea Flower how this week just gone has made me want to see it finished even more - but I keep reminding myself, patience!

Making a Rockery in my Scottish garden

Do you remember what I started off with?
The rocks were already in place for the rockery, so all I had to do was choose plants  - mostly alpines  - and then what type of gravel to put at their base to improve drainage and stop them rotting.

This was before, you can see the rocks on the left of the photo.

Here are some of the plants -

 the gravel is "golden buff" colour - on a dull day, it looks a pale stone colour

on a bright day, the gravel looks white!

So there's my rockery planted  - next is to plant the climbers for the trellis, get the paving laid, new gravel, then I can plant the main body of plants!

Garden transformation

The next thing we had to do in our Scottish garden transformation was to demolish the old shed!

and finally, it's completely gone!

Next we took up the concrete slab, painted some trellis green, installed it on wooden posts in metposts (concreted in)

There are old slabs on the right to take up, as well as the rockery in front to plant. That's before we start on re-paving and dealing with the lower level of the garden, too! It's very enjoyable though, giving living things a new place to grow and be happy.