OUR GARDEN

Fuchsia

Our garden is maybe not the most beautiful in Norrköping but we love it. It was before we moved to this place, a part of wide cultivated soil with deep clay. When we dig down 15-20 centimetres a light blue clay is there. It is good for the growth - but it is heavy. Today there are huge trees, bushes, flowers, a lawn and a wide variety of plants, wild and cultivated.  

As we continuously plan the ground around our house, we try to keep our flowering garden as close as possible to porch, windows, doorway or deck. The flower garden is an integral part of the overall planting idea and serves as a soft transition between the house and the general landscape.

Trees and shrubs help point up the plan and give the garden its form. They also make it more exciting by providing shadows, texture, contrast, and to some extent create different rooms. Some evergreens are especially useful near the entrance of the garden because they are still colourful in the winter when perennials are sleeping and annuals are gone.

The changes from year to year are not dramatic but it is always fascinating to think about the renewal of details. The last years the number of stones has increased, stones from the nature and bricks from building stores.

Perennials and annuals are of course the two major kinds of flowers we grow, and by combining them we have a spring-to-winter colour display with "little" effort. The beauty of the garden is a result of selecting plants on the basis of their height, colour, growth habit, season of flowering and preference for sun or shade.

Our interest in fuchsias has grown. We have been able to keep a special Norrköping variety, Kronström, for about thirty years and the number of different fuchsias is about sixty. There are also different kinds of pelargonium.

Important for the growing of flowers and vegetables is the greenhouse. There we grow tomatoes of many colours and tastes. In the ceiling, hundreds of clusters of grapes hang late in the summer.  

These are some words about the garden. You are welcome to enter the picture gallery to see how it turns out from different viewpoints and during different seasons.