A concrete path runs down the side of our home . Over the last 16 years my input has been minimal (to say the least ) Leaves have rotted down and created a growing medium, and shade tolerant plants have naturally self seeded in. April finds the pathway full of primroses,aquilegia,welsh poppy, alpine strawberries,foxgloves and saxifrage. I really only walk down this pathway to fill the bird bath, it is more of a garden we just look onto from the kitchen, and I really do enjoy spending time just looking out onto it. I hope these images show what you can achieve , by doing very little ( well apart from waiting that is).

As well as having a garden , that in a former life was a concrete pathway ,our main garden was a hard paved yard when we moved here ( 16 years ago ) It still is a hard paved yard, but it is very much a perennial garden, where many of my chosen plants stand tall …

This is my garden today.

And here it is late last year . As you can see I like tall plants .

When we first moved here, I really wasn’t quite sure how to approach turning a hard paved yard into a garden. So initially it became a container garden. Design wise, it was really more a collection of plants in containers than a spatially designed garden . At one point , I had over 100 containers, and attempting to water them was time consuming and used up way too much water. To resolve this , I came up with an idea about ten years ago, where I let native plants and self seeding perennials grow in between the pavers, which enabled the containers to blend in amongst the self seeding plants. But it didn’t really solve the problem of watering the containers. However, this problem was later solved by making raised beds from builders breeze blocks. It was the perfect solution as I reduced the amount of containerised plants by over 50 % through planting them in the raised beds.

My gardening project for this year is to carry on growing more plants and to get rid of at least 50% more of all the individual containers . Does anyone need 25 containers of lovely plants ?! If so let me know.

Images below are of new seedlings for this year . Garden images taken from today and the last couple of years, which depict how the raised beds were constructed.

So, if your garden is hard paved like mine, there really is a simple solution to create plant borders . Breeze blocks are very useful .