Is this not the most beautiful collection of gardens? The first thing I always do when starting a room (and I’m treating the garden like another room) is head to Pinterest and gather inspo pictures. I have a special garden mood board on Pinterest for gardens that I absolutely love….where I wouldn’t change a thing! And here are my top five! Below are the links to these beauties so you can click through and really get all the details!
- Top left: The water is just stunning at night and I love the mix between the wooden boards and the pavers. Charlotte Rowe garden designer.
- Top middle: Love the dark fence against the greenery and paired with the pale stone pavers. I really want to go dark with our walls, but I wonder would they be a pain in Ireland to keep clean?! You can check out this DIY garden here.
- Top right: It seems I like a rectangular section of water! But we certainly do not have the budget for that!😂 Todhunter Earle Interiors
- Bottom right: One of my all time favourite gardens. The gravel, the overgrouted stone on the buildings, simple planting….it’s all just so stunning! Wouldn’t expect anything less from Amber Lewis!
- Bottom left: I love the asymmetrical placement of the paving, though Trevor isn’t a fan! Love the gravel surround! Charlotte Rowe (Her gardens are so stunning!)
How do these relate to my garden mood board?
So realistically, my garden is not going to look like these, unless we win the lotto! But I can study all these pictures, see what is similar between them all and then add that to our own garden. Here are four things I found:
- Light coloured pavers/stone on the ground.
- Lots of greenery.
- Simple paving with no boarder or edging detail.
- Gravel.
This has actually made life so much easier when it came to making decisions. I found the perfect spot to add some gravel edging that can be seen from the kitchen. And when the landscaper has gently tried to convince me to use a different coloured stone as a border around the patio, I can confidently say no, because I know I want all the paving very uniform.
The Before
The great news is, phase one of this mood board is going to become a reality very soon! The landscapers arrived at 7.30am this morning and they are going to be here for three days in total. Lots of decisions have been made over the last week and I’m such a mixture of nerves and excitement!
Let me show you the garden they arrived to this morning, but be warned: it’s in such an awful state!!! I showed every inch of it on Instagram stories last night if you want more of a look!
One of my favourite things about our garden is that greenery at the back. It needs to be cut back a good bit right now, but it adds so much to the view out of our kitchen! It doesn’t feel like we’re living in the middle of a town! We are replacing the capping on the walls, cleaning and sealing the walls and adding steps up to garden from the back left of the patio. We are, of course, replacing all the current pavers.
Can you see where the dark stone capping sample is sitting? We are going to be removing this entire section of wall that is sticking out from the main garden. This will allow us to open the sliding door and walk straight out onto the patio (without having to walk around this section). That narrow slope will then be replaced with a step up onto the patio. Our new paving will come down this step, up to the sliding door and all the way along the wall to those steps you can see at the back left of this photo. It’s going to be amazing!
Side Garden
This is along one side of our house and you can see it has basically become a dumping ground! So manky I know! And the worst part is that there is a floor to ceiling window in the kitchen looking out onto this area! The crap has been strategically placed so most of it is hidden from inside! 😂 This is where we are going to be putting pavers down the centre and gravel at the side. The gravel will be seen from the inside and I can’t wait!!!
Later in the week…
In a few days time, I’ll be able to show you the finished paving…eeek!!!! There will be lots to do the garden still, like the walls, planting, furniture and maybe even decking – I might put together a garden mood board for each of these! But this groundswork is the biggest chunk of it – so glad we hired it out, it was too important to DIY! Or maybe you have DIY’ed this stuff?? I would love to know! Looks like 2023 is going to be a busy year and I can’t wait!!!
