How the garden grows
Back Some old pictures showing 40 years of development
We bought the house to make a home for the family including two boys and a dog and a cat. The upper floor was to house our architect's office. My husband taking care of the buildings and I myself of the gardens as well as interior design and office-work; two constr.engineers to our help. Now we are retired since ten years, but four grandchildren and two greatgrandchildren help to fill up
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From the Baltic Sea the narrow fjord Braviken stretches due west and ends up in the wide Pampus bay. At the southern shore, facing the sea, we bought an old ruin (built in 1928) of a house in 1963, with views like these from the windows in early spring. Here comes some old pictures from the very beginning.
2 The house and garden 1962
We went ahead with the renovating of the house and making a garden. There were only two old apple-trees, one very tall birch by the house and facing the sea three old willows. In the garden was neither shade nor shelter. But the neighbouring garden had big oaks and maples, birches and ash-trees and has during all these years been a lovely park for us to enjoy together with the wildlife: hares, pheasants, hedgehogs, squirrels, some roe deer, one badger and one elk! and a wealth of birds feeding on the many berries, heps, cones and acorns.
3 The new renovated house 1965
The first summer 500 lorry-loads of subsoil were delivered and we built two terraces up to the level of the first floor of the house and formed new slopes down to the level of the lawn to be. The whole area was about 3000 square-meters. Then we started planting the hedges of hawthorn and trees and bushes. We planted 200 bare-rooted tiny Cotoneaster dielsianus for the slopes - these formed in time a funny "tunnel" over the paths for the kids to run and play in secret. In 1965 we started planting the rose-path with in the main old-fashioned shrub-roses. When this was accomplished I just went on planting things that caught my interest, without any particular plan. The forms and colours of leaves and branches and trunks fascinate me. With many evergreens I can enjoy the garden the whole year, in the long wintertime there is much to look at. I have raised lots of plants from seed; as a leader of the Swedish Garden Society's seed-exchange for three years - we made 65.000 packages of seeds and distributed every year.
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The beginning of what was to be the rosepath was a mixed hedge of  old shrub roses planted in 1965.
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In 1966 we planted a small grove - beginning with 15 Amelanchier canadensis. A couple of years later we just scraped away the turf (lovely compost) added some 10 cm sand and on top 15 cm peat. Then we started planting all sorts of suitable plants and never had any troubles of weeds up till this very day! The rest of the garden has always been infested with ground elder, coming in from the neighbouring parkland.
7 This area - The Kitchen Yard - was filled up one storey high to the first floor of the old house. It had to be left to settle for a couple of years. The first plantings included a lot of roses in this  open and sunny position. By and by they had to give way for more evergreens and more shade-tolerant plants. Out here in the shadow under the canopy of the wide Stag's-horn Sumach we take our meals in summer-time. In 1968 we laid out concrete-tiles all over the terrace . The elder son taking a rest in the corner, where the dining-place was to be.
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In the saeward garden  my husband cut  the first  sod for the new plantings in 1969, when the hedge of Cotoneaster acutifolius was forming a shelter from the sea.
Around 1970 we thought of making a little woodland. We had started the garden sowing grass all over and then by and by scraping the turf away and digging deep planting-holes in the subsoil (an axe and an iron-bar lever was handy to have). The ground consisted of what Karel Capec called "Culture-soil”, consisting of everything but loamy earth. We filled all the holes with our own compost, having a lot of weeds, grass-clippings and leaves from the big trees to use. The former owner sold off the topsoil before leaving, there was just 3 cm left to us to start-up on! We planted along the north-westerly side of the rose-path some conifers: Chamaecyparis nootkatensis 'Pendula', Metasequoia, Larix, Pinus nigra and Pinus cembra. The tall birch and half a dozen Acer ginnala by the corner of the house making the start,  Laburnum anagyroides and + Laburnocytisus adamii at the border to the new house making the end.
9 Here comes my husband wit a load of compost material - cigar in mouth as a true Dane.
10 Building the pool 1972
The pool has now functioned in 30 years without problems! I think it must be unparallelled  for this material of thread-armoured plastic-canvas! The frame is made of pressure-creosoted sheets of plywood. Good drainage all around. The water is of course kept in the basin all year round. And roaring with children of all ages through the whole of summer. The youngest my great grand-children and the oldest my father-in-law diving into the water at an age of 90!
11 The garden and the new pool 1972
In 1973 my husband built a low wall at the bottom of the slope to the seaward-terrrace. The terrace was built by the first owner entirely of bear-bottles, delivered by a friend-brewer - empty though! The wall starts with the shrub Rosa hugonis and ends with an old Syringa . On the pictures there are several Cytisus, Genista, Aubrietia, Phlox, Iberis sempervirens , Meconopsis cambrica and two Juniperus 'Obelisk'. To the left a look into the rose path.
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14 Son and friend building the pergola along the rose path 1978	15 View against the fjord Braviken 1996
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As our younger son was looking for a home for his family in this area, my husband made a design 1989 for a new house on the southern boundary of the garden up to the main road. We used 1000 square-meters of the lawn and the grove, the latter left intact. First thing was to put up a new fence as a shelter during the time of construction.
17 The new house by the main road, the old oaktree and part of the grove
Now - after 40 years- we have a very shady garden, with many a sheltered place where to rest -we like to look at them when we are hurrying by with our gardening-tools! The smaller and sun-loving flowers are scarcer as the trees are growing taller and the owners older. The sentiment of the garden has changed, but our love is the same.
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Last update : 27 April 2002 Last update: 18 March 2010		File: Vera_Garden_Dev.htm