Gardening Goals, Inspiration and Garden Borders with Stone

Before we embarked on our massive garden overhaul project, I spent a lot of time looking through my favorite inspiration photos. I took notes of what we liked about our yard so far (what worked well, what didn't work well, what I like the look of but wasn't practical). I broke my inspiration images down into short lists of what I liked (why yes, I DO have a type A personality with a side of OCD) and I quickly noticed that they all have a common theme.

I'm going to call it English country garden/New England country garden (Cape Cod), with a side of french country garden thrown in and a splash of California channeling country garden.

What do they all have in common?

Lots of flowers. Gray and white as a base with splashes of color. Shutters. Cottage charm. Window boxes. Informal "English country garden" feel. Dense beds of flowers and green lawns meeting. Lots of vertical structure - arbors, obelisks, pergolas and trellises. Climbing roses and vines. "Secret Garden" doorways and gates. Low, charming fences and rock walls. Casual stone borders. Slates. Pea gravel walkways. Wood and stone. White picket fences. Globe lights. Ceramic and terracotta flower pots mixed right into the garden. Breaking up larger spaces into little sections. Incorporating things like ugly sheds into the gardenscape with climbing vines, receding colors (green, gray) and adding charm to them. I also threw in my love of aqua because that's not going anywhere.

So all that inspiration is where we are headed.

While we can't paint the house, we are repainting the garage the same gray as the foundation I did last fall. With crisp white trim, it should look nice. Then we're adding trellises, arbors to the garage and raised bed garden. Maybe another obelisk. Pea gravel walkways with slates and pavers to make walking and gardening easier (pea gravel looks great but it's prone to weeds and it shifts a lot underfoot without more stabilization). I'm devising future plans to continue incorporate vertical structures for more climbers (probably roses if I can keep my David Austin's Lady of Shalot alive, which is also heavily incorporated into my inspiration above).

From my chaos post, all those stones we got from my moving neighbor (the slate chunks) - they have already been put to good use. Garden borders where the beds meet the driveway!

In the front yard, I layered them right on top of the pavers we already had in place to prevent mulch and soil erosion on the hill. These are a lot more charming and totally have that informal English country garden feel to them.

This one is the edge of the bed in front of the porch (ignore the debris and just admire the stones we had crazy storms yesterday... or maybe just notice there is NO MULCH in the debris, just dead grass - the rocks are doing their job!).

And the mailbox garden on the corner of the driveway and street.

I LOVE how this looks.

In the back the garden bed meets driveway border stretches all the way down the left side to where the forysthia bush and grass starts. I put the stones right at the edge of the dirt between the driveway and the low garden fence we put in to deter Morgan. They are made for stacking, so they layers came together easily. I love that the sweet peas are already cascading over them.

On the right side, these rocks will be super helpful at preventing erosion from this bed. I've been hesitant to put rocks here because it prevents us from opening the gate all the way... until Mike pointed out that we NEVER open the gate all the way and if we need to, it will be a big enough deal we can plan ahead and move the rocks. Good point.

It's not a huge change, but it makes the edges look clean and will help keep the mulch from eroding down the driveway in the rain. And honestly it's the little details that add up until our yard could be in the inspirational photo collage too.


(Inspiration image credits: @betterhomesandgardens, @shopterrain, @debbietenquist, @europeangardendesigns, @floretflower, @layeredvintage @capecodimages, @delmargarden, @derletztewolf, @clivenichols, @peppertreelanestudio, @ourlovelygarden, @bloomsandbounty, @yardbasics, @_thesuburbancottagegarden_, @gardens_and_architecture, @tradgardmedutsikt, @gardenista_sourcebook, @tuinsensatie, @artichokesandokra, @rootedflowers, @deannacat3, @gardensatfirstlight, @david_austin_roses, @bluelobsterflowerfarm, @blueridgeblooms, @joysgardens, @scarlettandjoy, @silviadekker, @antoniovalenteflowers, @oldsilvershed, @potagerblog, @rootedgarden, @ourfauxfarmhouse, @countrygardensmagazine, @mccormickcharlie, @hayman_design, @getgrowing.bgh, @clausdalby, @junesblooms, @cafedesignblog, @magspangeni, @lost_coast_succulents, @addytude, @cupofjo)