Sometimes the paving options available for your garden patio area are plain and many gardens with patios may have the same style of paving. This is fine if you just want something plain and standard that does the job you want it to, but what if you want something different, and want something that reflects you and your personality?

If you are good at art, and want to attempt to create a mosaic mural for your patio you can start collecting fragments of old china and similar things around the home, and start piecing things together like a jigsaw puzzle; this of course will take some time to collect and sort out the pieces to make it work though.

The best option is to get mosaic tile pieces for the garden and start arranging the tiles on a large board or plastic groundsheet in the garden until you figure out the style you want and love; you can have a spiral effect, chequered, multiple circle spirals, shapes letters, or even an attempt at a famous painting. Just remember it will be a long term feature that you have to love for many years to come, so it has to really fit you.

When you are ready you can start levelling the patio area and start to put down a solid base to rest the mosaic tile pieces on, so they don’t warp and become uneven over time; if you can do this yourself then it’s even better, but if not you can ask for help, or hire somebody for the levelling and marking of the outline for the patio area you want to create.

Then you can start putting together your design and adding the grout as you go, and eventually your mosaic patio will start taking shape; it’s not an overnight project and may take a few weeks, so best to do this in summer and have some kind of covering available to work under for shade or shelter. You can get some 4 post temporary awnings for this, and they can work well for the task at hand.

Sometimes it’s good to sit by a window and gaze into the garden, or read a book by the window. Often you will either have the curtain drawn or if open you will be staring into pitch black darkness and it’s just not going to have the same calming effect.

You can get a Sakura fibre optic tree for your garden if you don’t have any trees in your; preferably one that has phase lighting that fades from one calming colour to another. The lights will be low power, usually on the battery with some that have solar powered options in conjunction with a chargeable battery.

If you have a tree in your garden you can get some small led lights to put in your tree that don’t have to be wired up to anything, just battery or solar powered and almost invisible during the day due to their low profile.

This way when you gaze into the back garden at night and have low lighting inside as you read a book, you will also have low calming lighting outside and are free to gaze and wonder into your garden and let time pass by.

Uprooting a tree is no easy task, especially if the tree is old and has deep roots. There are special machines out there that help uproot trees and move them to other locations, but for the larger trees with thick trunks and well established roots, that won’t be an option; machinery may be too large to get into your garden, and it may be costly.

When you have to dig up the tree stump, it’s usually best to dig a whole from the base of the tree 6ft from the base outwards in a circle around the tree, and then start digging down to uncover the large roots. Once this is done and the roots are fully exposed you can use a circular saw to start cutting into the roots; some may be larger than the saws disk to cut through, so just cut an angled section, like a piece of cheese so you can start finishing off with a sharp axe.

You will need to cut the root at the base of the tree and follow the root down to the 6ft perimeter and cut the root off from there and remove that section of root; you could try to pull up more of the root that’s past the 6ft perimeter and buried under the ground in the part you did not dig up, but it’s not really worth digging up your whole garden to find the rest of the root system, so it’s best to cut what you can and leave the rest in the ground.

Once you have got all those sections of roots up around the base of the tree, you can start digging deeper until the tree stump becomes loose and easier to remove; you may find other roots further down and you can deal with the same way as you did the others. You can then get a sledge hammer to further loosen the tree root until it is ready to be taken out; be-careful as the root may be heavy and hard to handle, if in doubt get some assistance from a friend.

So you’re now left with a rather large hole, and refilling it with the soil you removed is not going to be enough, as you will need to get some more soil to replace the space left from the absence of the tree stump and roots. You can choose to just get top soil, some rocks and some garden decorations with solar lights and build a rockery instead, or you can fill in the hole and turf it over.

You have seen those gardens around that have those nice quaint little features in their front garden; some even ruin it by adding a small pond or garden gnome, or some other tacky garden item.

It’s easy to create a small feature for the front of your garden, but it really depends on how big your front garden is; if the garden is small just keep it simple with gravel or block paving as it’s easier to maintain and does not require anything spectacular. If you have a fair sized front garden and have some trees, a great idea would be to create your featured area around the base of the tree; you can get everything you need from the your local garden centre to do this.

Creating the featured area in 7 easy steps:

Step 1: Start by cutting out a free-flow shape around the base of the tree with a spade; stand with your back facing the tree and take 4 or 5 large steps forward and then start creating a free-flow circular type shape around the tree where you want the border to be.

Step 2: Once you have marked where you want the border, then start cutting out sections of the grass using the spade, all the way from your set border to the base of the tree; always best to have about 20 – 25 inch wide strips that you can cut out with the spade and then start loosening the roots, so you can cut and roll the turf and handle easily when removing (cut down about an inch depth to get the roots of the grass in case you want to use it elsewhere, or sell it).

Step 3: After you have cleared the area of the grass around your tree start laying some small rocks around the border you created so you can define your border. Then lay some varying shaped rocks around the base of the tree, but not too big and not too small; you can hide some small stone creatures amidst the rocks if you wish.

Step 4: You can now start putting down some stepping stones in any particular pattern that best suits you, from the border to the base of the tree; some people put the stepping stones in a circle around the tree also, so that might be an idea to consider.

Step 5: Start planting some green leafy plants in random patterns according to your style and taste around the featured area, and compliment them with some nice all-year-round flowers that won’t grow too big, dotted around the base of the tree and border randomly.

Step 6: The next step would be to add the top soil to re-level the ground level of the featured area with the rest of the lawn.

Step 7: Finally you can get some varying shaped solar lighting and dot them around in various places in your featured area to provide a calmly lit featured area to come home too late at night.

Garden Maintenance is an ongoing job, once you have a house with a nice garden it’s your job to take care of the house and the garden. If you kept your house tidy but not the garden(s) then it does not reflect well on you; they come together and like anything you have in life you have to look after it.

If you don’t trim hedges often they will become overgrown, and when you do trim them there will be dark brown gaps weaved throughout the hedge where the light could not get in. In addition to that the hedge may have become warped over time and no longer be straight; it might not matter to the less superficial, but taking pride in something outside your home is always worthwhile.

A key tip to straightening your hedge and allowing new growth to hide the brown patches is regular maintenance like once a month. You can straighten the hedge by putting long metal rods into the ground and tying them to something at the back that won’t be moved or easily forced moved by the branches of the hedges that you will tie to them.

It’s cheating to use miracle grow on the hedge, but after several months it will start to pay off and the dark brown patches will start to disappear as the the hedge starts growing again in those places; sometimes though if the hedge has warped in such a way that there is a large gap that is only covered when the hedge is overgrown, and you can’t correct it using the metal rods, then you will have to start thinking smart. You will need to get some metal wire, and start fixing branches in such a way that they will eventually adapt to the new position and start growing that way; it’s important to start repositioning the wire every couple of months so the wire does not get grown into the branches, and also so you can adjust accordingly to how the branches have grown and where you want them to be.

Once you have done everything you need to ensure your hedge starts to grown straight and without dark brown patches, by regular maintenance. Then they can relax knowing you have achieved something great that will compliment your home well.

Moving to London has been quite a journey – especially for someone used to having a garden of their own to tend to and enjoy. We have one in my new place, a little smaller and easier to manage than one that I might be used to. Just over the road though, or should I say about a 5 minute walk away, is Brockwell Park – one of the largest areas of greenery in south London (aside from the world famous Richmond Park to the west of us.) It is nice having these massive areas nearby as well.
These parks are obviously tended to by the council and specialists, but at the same time they can’t possibly be maintained as intricately and precisely as an individual garden – which is for the best. These are a bit more rugged, a bit more ‘natural’ and a bit closer to a natural space than an overly tended garden might be. It is a great break from the urban jungle and concrete walls of some areas as well.

We had some people round last night. We went to the pub for someone’s birthday, had a great time and decided to have some people back to ours afterwards to carry on the party. I won’t bore you with specific, party related details – suffice to say we have something of a cleanup job on our hands this morning. Not just in the house though, which would just about be ok, but in the garden too we have a little bit of a mess to sort out this morning.
I opened my curtains this morning, had a look out the window and had that realisation that I would have to go out in the rain, get myself all wet and horrible and start to pick up a few bottles of beer, cigarettes and any other bits of paraphernalia that happens to be lying around. I will get back to you on how it goes…

Gardens are, for all of our posturing and talk about them being modern day essentials, an extreme luxury. The reality of the housing market, the life of renters and the astronomical costs involved for many mean that this wonderful activity is a luxury that many people simply cannot afford. Yet we, as an industry, continue to abandon these people and make no effort to spread gardening to those people who can’t afford to do it.

It would not be an easy task, I grant you that, but many places have public works projects to encourage people to garden or, at least, to understand nature a little bit better and understand self sufficiency. By encouraging people from a young age we will start to give people the right awareness of how important an understanding of nature is. As the demand for houses goes up, and the population rises, these spaces will become more and more scarce; something we cannot allow to happen.

I like to let you guys know when I am doing things that are fun and nice. Today the weather has been glorious (in fact it still is very nice while I am stuck inside writing this.) I donned my shorts, threw on my vest top and flip flops and stepped outside into the sun. Really I should have put sunglasses on as well but what can you do? Instead I opened the garage door grabbed a bag and some shears and went to town on some bushes and plants that had been offending me during those rainy days.

I have bushes overhanging pathways, play crawling out of their beds and all over the shop. Well, I did have those things. Now, however, it’s clean. The paths are walkable again, the plants look trim and tidy back in their rightful places as well. Nothing beats a good bit of manual labour, a good garden tidy, while the sun is shining.

The tree is my favourite aspect of any garden. It’s not easy to maintain, nor is it easy to have one, and not every garden can even facilitate one but boy, when you get the right one, in the right place and at the right time? It can make all the difference; adding real personality and energy to your garden, while adding levels to make it more dynamic to look at.

Obviously it is an incredibly long term investment if you were to plant your own with most trees taking years to grow to their full size. So if you love the house your in (and your husband or wife!) then it could well be worth the investment. For many people, though, you’ll find trees in your gardens when you move in as previous owners will have left them in the move. Once it’s yours the fun begins; trimming, pruning, treehouses and all kinds of things will open up once you have a tree in your garden.