Spare Land

Hi,

I have been crearing out a far corner of my garden, most of which is situated right under a huge chestnut tree. It was overgrown with elderberry trees, ground elder, piles of chopped down branches from elsewhere in my garden and various rubbish.  It has meant I now have an empty, L-shaped piece of garden about 700 square feet total area and I would like to do something with it - but I don't have a clue what.

I am completely open minded about what to do with it - but I would like to make it look nice - and perhaps even become a bit of a feature in the garden.  The problem with it is that the entire area is fairly heavily shaded by the tree, so if I plant something it it, it will get very little sunlight.  Remember, too, that I live in southern Sweden, so I can't plant anything that would not survive a Swedish winter. Lastly, while I don't mind spending a few bob, my finances won't stretch to anything exotic like a gazebo.

All ideas welcome

Brutus

Or Ducks.

Whatever you plant will have not only to be shade-tolerant, but have to compete with the tree for nutrients, and don't count on having totally eliminated the ground elder either. Whereabouts is the tree trunk on the L shaped cleared area so I can get a better idea of possible design suggestions? As maloneranger says, spring bulbs like croci, snowdrops, daffodils (dwarf ones are more delicate, prettier and not as leafy) and bluebells, plus Chinodoxa (Glory-of-the-Snow) or Pulmonarias (Lungwort) with their diverse leaf and flower colours would be gorgeous and they will seed nicely as mine do whilst there is no shade from the leaf canopy. Then it could become a mini-woodland later on with foxgloves, Vinca major or minor (periwinkles). I even have Hellebores surviving in the dry shade of my big Sycamore tree. What I would do for now, is to keep an eye out for re-emergence of the ground elder, and dig lots of moisture-retaining compost into the ground. If you can get hold of some bark or wood chips to put on top, that will act as a mulch and help to retain moisture for things like pretty primroses and cowslips.

Thanks for the suggestions. We already grow quite a lot of soft fruit (strawberries, delicious wild strawberries, raspberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, cherries, plums and greengages), but lingonberries never occurred to me, which is odd because they are a big favourite here in Scandinavia. I hope I didn't give the impression that my garden is some kind of Arctic tundra. I live in southern Sweden, where the latitude is about the same as Dundee, so I can grow pretty much whatever can be grown in a typical Scottish garden - except that we do get some extremes of cold in mid-winter.

We already have a sandpit elsewhere in the garden - and it's close to the house, which is important as our only grandchild is aged just two. He is a bit young for a tree house just yet - and i am not 100% sure the tree is actually ours. I thought it was but it is bang on the boundary and my wife seems to think it technically belongs to the farmer at the side of our property. It is a sweet chestnut.

Poultry wouldn't work for us as we travel quite a bit and leave te property unattended.

I appreciate the flower suggestions from goosegril and maloneranger - these might work well. I am keeping a watchful eye open for any signs of the ground elder returning. I have some super-strength Roundup (glyphosene) and i have found that a couple of treatments of that and the stuff is dead as a dodo. The first sign of it re-emerging will be met with a dousing of this stuff and another treatment a week later.

Once again, thanks for the suggestions.

Brutus