Saturday, July 31, 2010

Flower bed in front of the house

This is the bed we see from our window.

On this place stood the old cabin we dismantled when we finished building our house. It was a rather exciting undertaking, as it stood hardly a half meter away from the new house.

I wanted to plant something really beautiful on the place of the ruins. However, this place is so difficult that I have been toiling with it for fourteen years.

The soil is pure sand. It is quite shady, but at noon it gets full sun.

This is where I am at this moment.

This is the point, the bench under the Turkish hazel tree, from where I usually watch it.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Kinga’s garden

My friend Kinga is a landscape architect or, more simply, a garden designer. This is her own garden.

When she started to develop it, the garden was not really encouraging: a couple of evergreens and some grass digged all over by the dogs. She, however, in a few years made an exemplary family rest garden out of the ruins.

As they have two little children, sideways – where it does not ruin the overall view, but they can keep an eye on the children – they made a small playground with sandbox and swings. And in front of the house they built a large terrace of basalt stones which joins the house and the garden as an external room.

In the middle of the garden Kinga has maintained the grass suitable for playing, but she encircled it with shrubs and put perennials in front of them.

She managed to establish a rich garden with several functions which at the same time can be easily maintained.

In a couple of days Kinga and her family – as they cannot earn their living with their profession in Hungary – will move to Britain. We hope that there they will have another garden from where they will not have to move for any reason any more.