A list of blogs from the home page David Domoney. David is a Chartered Horticulturalist with over 40 years of experience growing and caring for plants. David has also worked on UK national television for over 2 decades. As a garden designer, David has won over 30 RHS medals for his garden designs at leading UK gardening shows and events.
It was another great episode for series 4 – here’s what we learned from the show this week. Plus find out what plants we used to make the most of smaller spaces!
1 Small gardens are tricky
This was the smallest garden we’ve ever done on the show, but I know that it’s a reality for so many people. I hope we showed that a lack of space does not stop you having a great garden!
The main thing to remember is to use less hard landscaping materials – two or three will suffice. And don’t fill it with small features! They make it feel disjointed and cluttered. Choose a couple of big, complementary features for much more impact.
Everyone loves flowers, and you can fill your garden with them very easily. It’s not just about beds and borders – plant them in pots, ponds and crevices in walls and patios. For height, try climbers, window boxes and vertical walls. And don’t forget the front garden!
Plus mix annuals in with your perennials. Annuals are great for instant colour and they are smaller than established perennials, so they don’t compete for root space in the soil. We used poppies, cosmos, nemesia, geraniums and petunias.
3 You can do lots with a balcony garden
No space is too small to host a garden! Make it immersive by putting plants and flowers all around you – in containers, up walls and on the floor too! Follow my tip for stunning windowboxes – make holes in the lining and push plants through it to get overflowing colour! Trailing plants like ivy or petunia surfinia are also great for wall containers.
With smaller spaces, simplicity is key. Stick to a simple colour palette, and choose a range of flowers and foliage that complement each other.
4 It’s easy to attract butterflies
They make a great addition to any garden, and the good news is that they love flowers! We used sedum, salvia, lavender, dianthus and philadelphus on the show, but the choice is huge! Butterflies also love thrift, phlox, catmint, marigolds, wallflowers and buddleja, obviously!
You can also attract them by making a feeder that mimics the nectar they love so much. Find out how here.
5 Put plants on the roof too
I loved the green roof on the shed! It’s a great way to naturalise your garden structures and improves the view from the bedroom window. Choose low-growing plants that will withstand any wind up there, such as sedum, saxifrage and other alpines.
Follow Alan’s advice and drench the root ball before you plant them – it will ensure they don’t dry out!
You’ve seen the show, now check out what happens behind the scenes!
(Missed it? Watch it on ITVPlayer now!)
Here is me with the production manager Jim Boyers. Take a close look, I’ve done this clapper board especially for you readers – it’s titled Domoney blog! Scene: 1, Take: 207, Roll: Bacon! You’re welcome!
This is Alan, Katie, Frances and myself drawing up the plans for the garden. Stef the cameraman is in the background. We have to film this sequence about three times – one for each different camera angle. This one is at the back looking down on the plan. We always film this in a professional location, um… on a trestle table in middle of the street.
Here we see Shaun down a hole, getting underneath the decking trying to put the lights in. You can see the lengths we go to on these garden makeovers! To the left with the hat we have Sam and to the right is Kevin, as the guys attempt to get everything together.
Next is a shot just after the rain – we had a marquee at the top of the garden, so we all hid under it. You can see the back of Alan’s head, Jon, Matt the sound guy and Matt the landscaper there to his left, as we all get under there to keep dry.
This is Amy Moon, our makeup artist. She’s giving Frances a little touch-up as she sits in a wheelbarrow, as you do. My makeup usually consists of dabbing a bit of peat behind my ears!
Here is Kevin, he’s our digger, driver and heavy plant material guy! The way he can swing those machines around makes an amazing difference to the garden. Though I always make sure my car is parked a few miles away when he’s on that thing, just in case! He does an amazing job carrying the packs in, and he’s quite a character.
Here is Cath, she’s one of our researchers. She put the kettle on, thinking it was one that you put on the stove over a flame. In fact, it was electric, and we had to buy a new one because she melted it!
This is where I planted the tree in the front garden with Frances. The trouble was that as we dug down, we realised there was a huge chunk of concrete under the soil. We had to get one of our hard landscapers, Jon, with a pneumatic drill and break up the concrete and get it out!
In this picture we’ve just had a rain shower, but Alan is out there looking fresh and dry! I don’t know how he does it. He’s putting a tree into position in the garden, and he’s busy explaining all the benefits of that particular variety.
Here is Frances cutting the lawn when we get together for our front garden makeover. There were some marvellous shots in the programme – I love doing front gardens. They’re so important to families and communities, and that’s why I started the Cultivation Street campaign to bring back Britain’s front gardens.
This is the gnome that we found in the front garden. It looked very angry, so when we finished the makeover I drew on a little smile and put him back in the garden. I’m very pleased it made it into the final programme! As you can see there, in between the rain it was a very hot day, and my face is bright red.
Back at the main garden, I found Steve shooting through an old Wendy house that he discovered round the back. He’ll go to great lengths to get the right shot, and here he is really leaning in through the window for the best angle!
Here are two of the Frosts guys having a nosy through the fence! On the left is Kevin, who’s one of the planters and heavy machinery guys, and to the right is Martyn, one of the lead chippies and a marvellous craftsman. They’ve both got a great sense of humour and it’s a pleasure to work with them.
This is Guy, the cheeky runner/researcher trying to steal the limelight! Frances is presenting in the background, and the team is trying to focus on her, but he’s jumping in front of the camera and taking all the credit. What a cheeky monkey!
This is what I see when I’m doing a piece to camera in the garden. It may look like I’m just talking to you on the telly, but actually I’ve got a large live audience! Two cameramen, a director in the front and two sound technicians. There’s another cameraman at the back taking shots from other the fence. From left to right we have Stef, Matt, Grant, Ben, Alice, Jim just behind her and Steve.
Here is Alan doing a piece to camera to sum up the show while all the people are in the garden celebrating. It’s always emotional when they get to see what a difference we’ve made to their garden.
