Landscaping your Garden around a sundial

You have just bought a new house. The developer has laid out a conventional garden with a grass lawn surrounded by flowerbeds and the whole area is enclosed in lap larch fencing.

Great if you have kids who wanted a large play area, but boring. How do you put your own personality on the garden and make it an area that is pleasant to sit in on a summer’s evening. The two most prominent features that you eye immediately focuses on are the green expanse of lawn and the bare wooden panelling.

Breaking up the bare panelling with small bushes and tall flowers will take your eye off the plain fencing, but what is needed is a central focal point that attracts your attention. A tree would help – after you have waited a few years for it to grow. A fountain would work, but do you want to go to the effort of laying a trench across that brand new lawn for power and water?

A central flowerbed is pretty in the summer but requires care and maintenance to stay attractive all year round.

What about something substantial and not seasonal? Easy to install and requiring little or no maintenance. Stoneware perhaps? Imagine a bold pillar standing proud in the centre of your garden, perhaps surrounded by foliage & flowers, continually catching your eye.

Most garden centres have a display of these pillars for sale. You will see them also described as plinths, columns, stands or pedestals. All mean the same but their composition is different. The cheaper ones (£40 to £80) are usually made of cast concrete with some colouring. For the price, they are excellent value but they cannot help but look and feel like concrete. The more expensive ones £100 to £300 are made from reconstituted stone. Natural stone is ground down to small particles and then reconstituted in a cast. These feel, look and weather like natural stone and are well worth the extra investment. It is going to last for years so the cost over 20 years or so is a few pence per month.

Now you have a focal point that will attract the eye but could be even more interesting. Why not consider setting a feature atop the pillar? A birdbath is the natural choice for bird lovers. For others the solution maybe a sundial. But not the conventional flat sundial with which we are all familiar and which can only be admired from close up.

Instead, consider a bold and striking design - an armillary sundial or sphere. Imagine a globe made of brass strips. The main bar is engraved with the hours from sunrise to sunset. Above this is a brass shaft tipped with an arrowhead and tail. When the sun shines the arrow shaft, positioned correctly by the sundial maker, will cast a shadow on the main bar. As the sun crosses the heavens this shadow will move across the main bar marking out the passing of time.

Now you have not only a focal point but also an object of beauty and interest.