Gardening in or near woodland

We all love the sight of majestic mature trees in the landscape, we all welcome the crops from fruit and nut trees and we love cycling or strolling through olive groves and pine woods in the Mediterranean or under the silver birches and oaks of Northern Europe. However, we aren’t quite so keen when we find our new garden has a tree, or a whole copse of trees, in it. Somehow we’ve developed the belief that trees inhibit our gardening, and will damage or drains or foundations. This isn’t true and by failing to capitalise on the value of trees, we miss many opportunities to develop our gardening skills.

Of course you won’t get a great lawn if it is highly shaded by trees – it will tend to be a bit patchy and not of the most emerald green hue. So why not give up the idea of a bowling green sward and instead plant bulbs into the turf so you have a flower studded carpet (the advantage of this is you can let the grass grow a lot longer so you don’t cut down the flowers and leaves). Ideal bulbs for this are:

Anemone, bluebells (but as these can be invasive, keep them to the edges of the lawn), crocus, especially yellow and white ones which gleam through the grass and cyclamen which pick up in the autumn with autumn crocus to give you almost a whole year of colour.

Under trees you can find space for superb and highly dramatic plants such as arum italicum with its long silver and green leaves and tall spikes in autumn covered in bright red berries which are poisonous to us but attractive to birds

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