Privacy planting for a garden seating area, near Whitland

This is a job we look forward to seeing the results of in a few years. A customer near Llanfallteg had spent over two years planning how to make the seating area at the back of her garden feel more private and enclosed. She has limited mobility, so the garden needs to be somewhere she can actually settle into and enjoy, not just look at from the house. The space itself was a small lawn with a bench tucked in at the back, open in a way that didn't quite feel private. She knew what she wanted: two planted beds that would grow up over time and give that sense of being held in.

The planting choices had a lot of thought behind them. The Cornus alba, a white variegated dogwood, was chosen partly for the way its lighter leaves catch the light, but also because from where she sits, it lines up directly against a black shed in the background. That contrast adds a lot, and it'll only get better as the shrub fills out. The Cordylines went in alongside, and because one of them will eventually reach a 1.5m spread, we had to think carefully about spacing from the start, leaving enough room to move comfortably around the beds as things fill in. That kind of forward planning matters when someone has limited mobility and needs the space to work for them long-term.

We worked perlite and multi-purpose compost through the soil before planting to improve drainage and give everything the best possible start on what originally was very clayey soil. The whole job came in at around half a day. We'll come back and update this page with photos once it's all filled out.