Some musings from our own home and garden renovation project in Norfolk.
Welcome! It's lovely to have you here. My name is Eleanor, I am a garden designer and I'm going to share our journey with you since moving into our home, in our little slice of Norfolk.
At the beginning
Our journey began summer of 2019. We had moved home from Derbyshire to our home counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and were on the hunt for a home. We weren't sure what we were looking for other than we were both certain we didn't want a new build, for whatever reason, and that I definitely wanted a large garden. In hindsight a new build would have been a lot easier...
It's been a long journey, in fact the finish line still feels a long way away. We happened to find a 1920s semi-detached house in Norfolk, just next to the river within a beautiful and quiet, green leafy village. James fell in love with the village and the potential the house held, I fell head over heels for the beautiful garden... no surprise there as I am a garden designer! And I'm sure that's why you're here rather than to hear much more about our home.
However the house itself was in need of a full renovation and would benefit from an extension, that is another story and very much still ongoing. We collected the keys in mid September 2019 and our builder David started June time 2020. Suffice to say it has been a lot of hard work, we now have both a beautiful side and rear extension or at least the shell of... Covid-19 has taken its toll, as you may well imagine, and delayed many things over the past year, including getting windows in, having suppliers or trades over safely etc. We are still without a kitchen or bathroom, but we are coping and will cope even better when we can start to have BBQs again! How exciting.
Whilst all of this has been happening, with David working hard to rebuild our home we have been able to turn to our garden and get stuck in. We first visited the house in the July when we moved home and the garden was a wild mess. The gentleman we bought the house from was elderly and hadn't been able to tend to his beloved garden as much in the last few years, despite that, when we looked around there was the most immaculate vegetable plot set within the rest of the over grown garden which was clearly his true love. #vegetablegarden #gardenplans
The potential was absolutely huge. It's not an enormous plot but the views over the back of the garden are incredible and the trees in neighbouring gardens give such a beautifully natural feel. I absolutely loved it, especially with its large greenhouse still in situ (albeit also in need of some serious TLC). However I started to fall out of love with it when we began clearing it... The number of metal stakes, posts, cast iron bath tubs... the list goes on, buried within this garden was something to behold... Anyway, I will be back soon to tell you a little more about progress since and my garden design plans for our plot. Watch this space! #gardendesign #gardendesignsuffolk #gardendesignnorfolk