How To Build Your Own Boho Backyard Scented Sanctury - Go High And Hang Low.
Even if you’ve got just a few square feet of outdoor space, be it a balcony, patio, terrace or tiny back yard, you can create an exotic plant-filled retreat. The trick is tiering and trailing.
I know when you watch those TV garden make-over shows it can look overwhelming when you see a team of twelve ‘experts’ turn up and spend thousands on an instant makeover with architectural wooden structures and a truck of plants. I know it looks impossible, it is, I used to make those shows, but it can easy and it can be cheap.
I have been renovating my Victorian terrace house in England for coming up to four years and after four months of staring at the inside in the pandemic lockdown, I’ve moved my attention to fancifying my small back yard.
I have been picking up plants over the last three years, but most of what I have used to create my boho scented seating corner has been bought in the last few weeks from my trips to the supermarket and mercy missions to the garden centre. Also, I estimate the whole corner cost about £50 to make - that’s all the plants and the pots, collected over a period of no more than three years. The vintage wicker chair was £15 from a charity shop.
TOP TIP NUMBER ONE - TIERING
Create a layered structure for TIERING your plants to utilise every inch of vertical space. Do it on the cheap by reusing and recycling things you already have.
In my case, I had a big purple council wheeley bin, but our street doesn’t use the bins, we put our rubbish out in the back alley in bin bags for collection. I couldn’t get rid of the bin, it’s bright purple and a bit ugly, however it is perfect storage for old plant pots and bits and bobs that I’ll never use, plus perfect for putting in the corner and standing big plants on. I wrapped most of it with some twiggy screening from B&M, I think it was £2.99.
Clearing out the old and snail-damaged plants.
I had three prickly holly bushes that I’d bought a couple of years ago in the sale for £2 each, in theory to form a barrier between my eyes and a particular ‘view’, but I ended up not bothering and abandoned them to their hostile spiky selves, plus a stabby date palm which I think was £3, and there I left them, both lost and dangerously unfriendly on the ground, in the dark and the damp.
Boho makeover - the ‘before’.
I had until this point given them and their area a very wide berth, which was obviously inconvenient in a small space, but as soon as I lifted them up and put them on the bin I got excited and fell instantly in love with them. There was immediately more than double the space and together they created the perfect cool-toned exotic backdrop to add soft and contrasting foliage and colourful flowers. They are a very soothing shade of tropical green and satisfyingly symmetrical.
Spiky & Stabby up out of harms way, now Cool & Soothing on the eye.
TOP TIP NUMBER TWO - UNDER-PLANTING TRAILING PLANTS
For me the fun is buying tonnes and tonnes of different plants. Quantity and variety is what makes me happy, but in a small container garden that means UNDER-PLANTING (careful how you say that) is the perfect solution to lack of space. If you, like me, go out to the shop for essential food and groceries and come home with a hoard of fuchsias, begonias and random leaves, then just shove them in any space you can, in their small pots, in the big pots.
Under-planting pots in pots.
Here, in the corner, I repurposed the old bath that came out of the house renovation as a planter a couple of years ago, but it’s constantly evolving, so I’ve wedged different sized pots in the gap between the bin and the bath. In this case I have a bay tree £3, fuchsias £1.50 and peony £1.49, African marigold with trailing lobelia, geranium, petunia and begonia (approx £1-£4 per tray) and prostrate rosemary (say that carefully too) £5 for 3.
Trailing lobelia & geranium and fuchsia.
Surrounding me on the other side of the chair is an aromatic Salvia ‘Armistad’ £4, which I have trained into a tall standard and also elevated it by standing the pot on bricks. I’ve under-planted it with a Begonia ‘Fragrant Falls Lemon’ £4.50 from B&Q, who smells like a delicious tangy lemon sorbet.
A floral fruit cocktail - Begonia Fragrant Falls Lemon, Orange, Lemon & Cola scented geraniums.
Beneath, I have wedged three scented geraniums: Orange, Lemon and Cola £4.99 each Dobbies, in the large pot that should have been my towering black banana palm, but the caterpillars did away with it, and below them is a rescue fern £2 from the clearance section.
Orange geranium & lemon begonia. Sweet.
In a short time the evergreen and perennial trailing plants will grow and cover the pots and the bin. The annuals and bedding plant flowers will die in the winter, conveniently making way for next seasons haul. There is the circle of life in the yarden - budge up or bugger off.
Finished, for now, more fiddling to come.
If you like to see how I created my scented retreat, please click on my Youtube video below, and if you like it, I’d be thrilled if you give me thumbs up, or even more thrilled if you subscribed. Thank you!
