Garden therapy results in more questions than answers

So as you know I have been reading a lot of books about garden design and am beginning to open my mind to the wider concepts that I am finding. I was interested by but reacted negatively to the opinionated rigour of The Bad-Tempered Gardener, because while her ethos (less plants and more design) is something I can appreciate I find her desire to find fault with most people about misanthropy rather than intellectual and aesthetic strictness. I do however want to acquaint myself with broader ideas before I fill in the gaps.

Anyway, I hoped our holiday visit to the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh would give me perspective and ideas but actually it didn't help. I should have known better - the Botanics are like a calming plant zoo. One of the points I have been coming to terms with is that the English equate great gardening with plantsmanship (one thing I agree with the BTG on) but while knowing that might be one thing, I also know that I love plants and quite frankly the more different types I can cram in the better. So a restrained planting scheme ain't ever going to happen for me. And it would be at odds with my exuberant and messy personality (ha ha).

Wandering about the turf and hills of Inverleith did give me some ideas though. I was thinking through the competing ideas for my back garden and realised that while there were multiple possibilities for design and ideas there I was viewing the front as an area just to be dealt with and a colour scheme is not a unifying theme. So this evening while reading Monty Don's Around the Garden in 80 days I came up with some thoughts which I will list as follows:

1) a potager is a classic device which I am going to investigate

2) I'd like to use some of the inspiration I got from reading about Cuban vegetable gardens

3) Piet Oudolf plants his annuals and perennials in rows. Interesting for someone who struggles with plant placement and maybe about the only one of his ideas I can implement

4) How about a sedum roof for the coal bunker?

Jamie took many beautiful pictures of our trip which are much better than the previous ones I have posted. Predictably however they are not ready for posting yet because of an IT issue. Sigh. But once this has been resolved you can see some of them plus my shallow musings about what I saw.