A pleasant surprise: this time we invite you to take a walk through the garden of our resident expert and TV presenter Olga Voronova, who, as you know, has a lot to learn. We admire and learn from the useful experience! My favorite dacha is a place that heals and gives strength. In order to deal with a problem, I just need to come here, and the solution comes by itself, along with inspiration and new ideas. When planning, I paid main attention to the entrance area. Literally at the very door to the house there was a large rockery. The main roles here are played by carefully selected beautiful stones – boulders of various sizes, shapes and colors. The ideal company for them are conifers and miniature alpine plants, and I grew many of them from seeds. She chose the rockery over the alpine hill quite consciously: this art object is located at the highest point of the site, so to create a harmonious composition it should not be high. In the evening, the rockery is illuminated by lanterns – the stone loves light, which advantageously emphasizes all its advantages. Tip: for illumination and similar objects, use lanterns with shades of simple shapes, for example, in the form of balls. The front garden is a special-purpose area, the calling card of the site, and is also designed in the Alpine style. There are two long flower beds made of flagstone-sandstone and separated by a path. I deliberately made the edges of the flower beds uneven so that they would resemble a natural mountain landscape. The plants I chose were perennial and the most unpretentious: daisies, lilies, lupins, delphiniums and daylilies. It is simple flowers that look most impressive in a frame made of natural stone. A steep cliff, one of the features of the site, is located in the entrance area and is visible from any point. Along with the obvious inconvenience, it also provided a design highlight. Below there are two spreading bird cherry trees, looking at which I came up with an “observation deck” – a large balcony combined with a cozy gazebo. The piles on which this unusual balcony is installed are braided with clematis and virgin grapes. The gazebo next to the site is stylized as a tea house, and the Japanese corner located next door only enhances the impression. I laid out this mini-garden in a shady place, practically unsuitable for floriculture, planted mountain pine, junipers, mosses and a few shade-loving plants, and used crushed stone and pebbles as decoration. Convenient steps of the garden staircase lead directly to the porch of a small but very cozy guest house. A viewing platform hidden in the shadows and a gazebo located next door are located directly above the ravine. This arrangement allows you to save space and add originality to the landscape. The paths on my site, in addition to a purely practical function, also carry a design function – they visually unite different zones. Most of them are paved with flagstone-sandstone, and some are made of colored concrete tiles. On the one hand, it turned out very casual, and on the other hand, practical, because the “difference” in textures and colors visually increases the space. All garden paths are distinguished by a wavy shape and many levels of steps, some are finished with borders lined with sea pebbles, which enliven the landscape. My lawn is also not like a traditional green lawn. It spreads freely throughout the site, therefore it prevents the growth of weeds, regulates the microclimate of the site and fixes the soil on the slope. Decorative shrubs, stones and flower beds look especially impressive against an emerald background. The relaxation corner is a cozy pond where you can cool off in the heat. Cute cats love the garden no less than its caring owner. I used the space behind the house to create an original terrace. This corner turned out to be extremely cozy, secluded, and also protected from the wind, and all the work on its arrangement came down to creating an unusual wavy paving and erecting a small wooden lattice. The balcony served as the roof of the terrace. At its foot there was a lush “all-season” flower bed with perennials and bulbous plants, and girlish grapes cheerfully crawled up the trellis. Tip: the original shape of the paving can be emphasized with a border of properly selected plants. For these purposes I used variegated hostas. The natural landscape is a frame for the man-made landscape, and if it is beautiful, it must be used. Therefore, the fence of my site is designed from various materials: where there is a spectacular view of the river valley and forest, it is transparent, from a chain-link mesh, where protection from the winds is needed, it is solid, but in the front area the materials and color of the fence correspond to the style of the house. I also have a small bathhouse, which is quite logically complemented by a swimming pool and a wooden bridge. This decision was partly due to the need to mask the complex difference in relief and turned out to be very non-standard, since constructing a pond on a slope requires a natural lowland. But in this area the slope is continuous, which means that, at best, a cascade of streams could flow along it. However… if you can’t, but really want to, then you can! As a result, a pond-swimming pool appeared on the site, because only this layout option was ideal for the “sauna complex”. The elevation changes are masked by boulders, bushes, tall grasses and creeping conifers. In fact, the pond smoothly turns into a kind of alpine hill with all its attributes, but the plants here are not alpine, but “coastal”. A greenhouse will not at all spoil the picturesque garden landscape if the right place and “company” are chosen for it. It’s very easy to turn an open terrace into a ladies’ corner. The main thing is to create the right environment. The garden cannot be called small – twenty large beds, a greenhouse and a strawberry meadow. But, despite the solid volume, this zone is very decorative: all the beds are hidden in high wooden boxes and resemble flower beds, especially when the bright fruits of vegetable plants ripen in them. Tip: raised beds in boxes are warmer than usual, less susceptible to weed attacks and more convenient to cultivate. The stone “slope” in the decor of the site also gave me the idea for creating an unusual barbecue. The result of work and thought was a grill fireplace, reminiscent of a rock fragment and made of various types of stone: sandstone, granite, rubble and boulders. The most difficult thing was designing the roof for the barbecue, because in our case it could not be standard. Perhaps no one would willingly acquire such “inconveniences,” but I am not an urbanist, I really love nature and highly value solitude. Well, here next to the site, within walking distance there is a beautiful forest, a large lake and only one neighbor. Of course, who would agree to live in a ravine! This place also has a special energy, and even at first, despite its completely abandoned appearance, there was an extraordinary sense of coziness and spiritual comfort here. By the way, even now, when entering my garden, guests note that it looks like another, some kind of magical world that they don’t want to leave. Text: O. Voronova. Photo: O. Voronova.
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