The Terrace Garden: Eight Years On
From dark, slimy slope to plant-crammed sanctuary, this is the story of our first ever big garden project.
When we moved in, the “back garden” was dark, slimy, and downright treacherous. More slip-and-slide than sanctuary. Now, it’s our sun-soaked, plant-crammed terrace with over 130 pots, two water features, and a shady corner where the hostas now rule.
Come and see how it happened…
It’s actually quite hard to remember what this plot looked like when we first moved here 11 years ago. Probably impossible for you to imagine, but let me prise open this little time capsule so you can take a peek into the past.
The terrace was our very first proper outdoor project. Well, if you don’t count the new cottage roof. Or the new windows. They’re sort of outdoors. I won’t bore you with the all-new plumbing, rewiring, the endless sawdust, and the sound of hammer drills. Dust, dust, dust. Moving on.
In fact, the terrace was the first real landscaping project we’d ever undertaken, anywhere. But it’s that first tamed slice of the outdoors that convinced us we could survive the chaos of living in a ramshackle (hideously decorated - think TOWIE but even more naff) and poorly maintained 17th-century cottage. All while simultaneously trying to renovate the building entirely and work out the beginnings of a garden.
How exactly it helped, I’m not sure. I think it just provided a breathing space, a buffer between the overgrown dereliction outside and the dust-laden, cable-bound, musty building site within.
If I had to describe the “back garden” in one word, it would be dark. Those monstrous leylandii didn’t just block the light, they seemed to swallow every last photon. Somewhere out there, astronomers study black holes for this very reason. They could save themselves the trouble and just plant a leylandii hedge.
The first steps outside the back doors were treacherous: slimy railway sleepers with ankle-twisting chunks of slate. The garden sloped immediately down and away, with the only level area right at the bottom.
If you didn’t check your footing, you’d slide (arms flailing, legs akimbo) all the way down, ending in a messy heap on the moss-covered concrete pavers. At least the dogs would be there to lick your face as you recovered your composure.
So, the requirements were very, very simple: a flat, level area that didn’t result in a dislocated hip, with enough space for comfy garden furniture and a few potted plants.
Phase One: The Runway Years (2016)
I won’t distract you with the technicalities of the hardscaping. Only to say it involved a retaining wall, a vast amount of aggregate, and enough sandstone to cover Trafalgar Square.
Freshly laid and pristine, the new terrace looked less like a relaxing garden space and more like a private landing strip. Broad, bare, and unnervingly linear — you could almost have taxied a small plane down it (we even had a few circling above us for a while).
The hard landscaping was all there: clean paving, neat white walls, the promise of something lovely. But without a single plant in sight, it felt exposed and sterile.
And then came the first arrivals…
Phase Two: First Landings
We started with the big players: specimen Japanese maples (Acer palmatum var. dissectum), evergreen buxus topiary, and a couple of ‘Emily Brontë’ roses potted neatly in green ceramics. There were also a few pots of alliums and agapanthus kicking about, for a splash of colour.
Soon, white and blue mophead hydrangeas joined the party - well before I knew blue mopheads would turn pink in the ground, or before I even knew there was such a thing as alkaline soil to turn hydrangeas pink!
Comfortable Bramblecrest seating arrived (because what’s the point in making a garden if you can’t actually sit and enjoy it?). That first summer, the terrace was still mostly stone, but it was beginning to earn its keep. To have a comfortable outdoor space, away from the endless building work, was priceless.
I remember that summer as a mixed bag. Heatwaves where we enjoyed long, balmy evenings sipping chilled wine and cuddling the dogs, and cooler, wetter spells where we’d be darting inside carrying armfuls of cushions in a desperate attempt to keep them dry.
Phase Three: The Great Pot Migration
The ten pots soon became twenty. Twenty became fifty. Before long, we were hauling in containers of every size and material: terracotta, zinc-galvanised steel, cast iron, ceramics, and stoneware. Each filled with something new to try.
An expanding list of Japanese maples; buxus in balls, cones, and cubes; corkscrew hazels alongside festuca grasses and alliums; the first Japanese forest grass; dwarf pines; and a random wisteria standard. (Even now, I’m asking myself: what on earth was I thinking?!)
Flash forward to today and there are over 130 planters. Edge-to-edge planting, with acers and roses rubbing shoulders with seasonal bulbs, buxus topiary, Hydrangea paniculata, agapanthus, dahlias and cosmos, heucheras and geums, salvias, veronicastrums, ferns, and Japanese forest grass. We are forever plotting how to squeeze in just one more.
Then, one summer, a cool, shady spot stole the show…
Phase Four: The Shady Table Arrives
Tucked under the north-facing gable, the Shady Table became its own little stage. Hostas, ferns, heucheras, and delicate foliage plants glow in the ambient light. A cool counterpoint to the summer sun elsewhere. It’s a still, calm space in the warm months, and in winter, when the terrace slips into shade, it hibernates with only the bronze grasses left to sway in the wind.
By now, the terrace was filled to bursting point, but it had also found its style and aesthetic. It knew exactly who it was.
Another Year with Hostas and Other Garden Affairs
I’ve been growing hostas for years, though, I’ll be honest, not always successfully. My very first experience was probably much like yours: buy a pristine, perfect hosta, plant it with the utmost car…
Phase Five: Finding Its Rhythm
The north-facing aspect gives the terrace a split personality: full, glorious sun from late spring to early autumn, then complete shade through the colder months. Over time, I’ve learned which plants thrive, which tolerate, and which deserve a dignified transfer elsewhere.
The pots and planters are endlessly interchangeable. A backbone of permanent planting holds the space together: the acers, topiary, roses, Hydrangea paniculata, ferns, and grasses. Around them, the seasons ebb and flow. Spring bulbs from February to June give way to summer’s cosmos, dahlias, and salvias.
Leisure time (morning coffee, afternoon cake, evening G&T) shifts in winter to the cosy timber potting shed (the only part of the garden to get winter sunlight, hence the two chairs) and the Courtyard Garden, which basks in a bright twilight cast by the sun bouncing off the cottage walls.
The space continues to evolve. A new water feature was added earlier this year, with pots shuffled to make room. There is more emphasis on Hydrangea paniculata for late-summer froth and a touch of vavoom, a shift from decorative dahlias to single daisy bee-magnets, and more Japanese forest grass and ferns filling the shady void beneath the acers.
Shady Table seems to grow in length and depth each year (more hostas, more ferns, more foliage plants) all wrapping around that cool, babbling water bowl.
Looking Back
I can hardly believe how stark it once was, yet at the time I was surprisingly self-satisfied, feeling the terrace was “finished” and “well planted.”
Now, eight years on, it is multi-layered, with a rich tapestry of foliage shapes and forms, and brimming with gentle floral abundance. It is a space that invites you to exhale the moment you step outside, as family and friends often remark.
Gardens rarely spring to life fully formed. They settle in, shift, and reveal themselves over time. I have said it often: I am no garden designer. I am a gardener who evolves a space based on needs, experience, and the undying requirement to be surrounded by plants… even buried under them.
The terrace has taught me to embrace that slow unfurling: the developmental stage, the tinkering and shuffling of pots, listening to the plants that sulked, the ones that thrived, and the ones that surprised me.
There is a quiet joy in watching a space gently evolve into somewhere that feels inevitable, as though it has always been that way. Like those master sculptors who say, “The art was already in the stone… I just had to remove the excess.”
It is a reminder that good gardens, like good friendships, grow richer the longer you live with them. They benefit from time, exchanges of ideas, the ability to listen, and the embrace of a perpetual conversation… oh, and they are always worth squeezing in just one more plant. 🌿
Coming up…
Paid subscribers get to sneak behind the curtain for all the gritty (and occasionally muddy) details — the supports I swear by, how I keep the watering can from becoming my sworn enemy, and what really goes into keeping the plants fed and happy. Then we’ll wander over to the Kitchen Garden, where everyone can share in my tales from the veg plot: the harvest heroes, the veg that flopped spectacularly, and the hard-earned lessons from a year that kept me firmly on my gardening toes.
You have quite a green thumb. Beautiful