I thought it was about time to share a little more of our garden journey over the past year. Buckle in for the ride (OK it's not thaat exciting). But it will help give you further insight into a gardens' journey, from overgrown conifer jungle to a beautiful garden, one day. Where were we? Ah yes, I had started sharing my initial design ideas for our plot. I will continue with that theme after sharing some more photos of our garden progress along the way. The photos below are from April 2020.
The house as you can see above was a relatively small semi-detached home, we have since extended three metres out to the side as a double storey extension and around three metres out to the back as a single storey 'Orangery' style #extension.
The asbestos clad garage, behind the #greenhouse in the photo, couldn't stay with the new extensions and who'd want to keep something that ugly anyway, plus asbestos? Having said that one day I will treat you and show you how we have repurposed the large metal frame in a rather glorious fashion.
You can see how there was a straight concrete path running down the centre of the garden, thank goodness it was there if only to make our numerous wheel barrow journeys significantly easier. Anyway as great as it was for clearing the garden it was going as soon as was practical.
We actually inherited two mature trees that were worth keeping, one stunning multi-stemmed magnolia and one variegated sweet chestnut. Very happy to have them as buying specimens of their size clearly isn't inexpensive and the house is first and foremost our priority (as important as the garden is to both of us we need a dry comfortable home first).
As you can imagine most of our budget, if not all, has been tied up in the house extension and renovation (still waiting for a kitchen, hot water, soft furnishings...). As much as I would love to crack on with the garden and get it done in one go, it's just not been possible. Knowing it was going to be a long ride we decided to get going with the garden ourselves - on any day off we had spare.
So we cleared all of the major vegetation, the multiple enormous conifers from trees to hedging. Many many shrubs, a huge number of weeds... On this note I would encourage you, if possible, to save to allow a landscaper to come in and do the majority, if not all, of the work in one go - unless of course you are super keen, with a lot of spare time on your hands. It will be far more efficient and far more exciting for you seeing things happen with more pace. We've been quite despondent over the last year in the fact we've not been able to move it to completion, however we also realise just how far we've come in a year too. And parts of the garden are in fact looking great this year!
We did have to ask a Suffolk based landscaper to help us with the next stage in the clearing of the garden, as this was just too mammoth a task for us with so much else going on. So June last year we had #TeaselsLandscapes in with their digger and rotavator... This was just before our #builder started working on the house:
It was one of the most satisfying stages as it went from a weed strewn mess of a garden with a concrete path... to a clear blank canvas ready to set out my design.
Anyway you get the idea (greenhouse and the metal frame from the asbestos garage ready to be moved into their final places). Talking of design, by the time we'd cleared the garden I had tweaked the original design ideas to something more concrete. I'll show you more below, where you'll be able to see the chosen positions of both the greenhouse and garage frame/new shed.
This concept drawing shows the main garden design, you'll notice how a path carries on through at the end of the garden. The drawing below shows the rest of the garden which is basically the productive end, including garden office, shed, greenhouse, raised beds & composters:
Anyway I think that's enough for one day. I will continue and show you our progress soon, with our handmade vegetable beds, composter & wood store, our repurposed metal framed shed & sparkly greenhouse and the beginnings of my garden office. Have a fabulous day ahead & check in soon. E