When the Small Faces sang and recorded their big hit – Lazy Sunday – which we all knew as Lazy Sunday Afternoon because of its lyrics, back in 1968, there wasn’t necessarily a plan that the whole of the warmest season of the year could be spent lazily, resting and relaxing in your garden.
The song was all about wishing you could get on with your neighbours. For many of us that means hoping that they won’t strike up their lawnmower to tackle the last six weeks of grass growth just as you sit down in your favourite garden chair and prepare to open up your e-reader.
Enjoying your garden
Summer is the time where you can step back and prepare to dream. The cold weather will have disappeared and the rain will be prepared to hold off for a least a few days at a time. Is there any better place for your creativity and imagination to work in tandem, as your personal private retreat in your very own garden?
Everybody should have a place that they can escape to from time to time so that you can forget all the stresses imposed on you by your family, friends, colleagues or government in general. Once you can select your favourite location in your garden, and be free of the world for at least a little while, all the planning and preparation you put into your garden design across the winter and planting in the early spring, will come to fruition during the summer.
Mixing your colours
Although greens and browns are the most dominant colours in your garden, with careful advance planning, you can add a variety of colours or just choose your favourite shades to dominate your shrubs, plants and flowers.
By using your trellis panels quite carefully, you can create a private area in your garden that is secluded not just from other members of your family, but from all of your neighbours. It is an effective way of screening yourself an area where you can be surrounded by your favourite flowers and all of your insect friends including bees and butterflies which can pass by and share their time with you.
To cope with the possibility, or rather the probability, of rain falling in your garden, usually minutes after you settle down for the day, you could consider installing a garden building which can be used as an extension to your luxurious retreat, but this will increase the expense of providing your lazy summer retreat.
On the plus side, a garden building will add value to your property and it may become the deciding factor which helps you sell in a difficult market place, should you choose to move your lazy summers to another location.
Include your garden building alongside the secluded area you’re going to be using for privacy and choose plants that can blend in with the established parts of your garden. You can also create a little hideaway area where scented plants and growing vines through a trellis can add to your satisfaction.
Your lazy summer, hopefully more than just one afternoon, will be complete when you have chosen the most relaxing of chairs. It will need to keep you comfortable for a number of hours and you can add a small table to your furniture collection to hold a cup of tea in the morning or a glass of wine during a sunny afternoon.
These garden tips are provided by Jen Byiers of Glasgow garden landscaping firm Gardens Galore.
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