Our Garden

It's funny how easily you can forget the progress that you've made. It was only the other day when I was out in the garden looking despondently at my flower beds and feeling that I had not really prepared properly for the summer when I realised that I had actually achieved quite a lot with our little plot.

I can still remember that hot July, five years ago when we first got the keys to our house and I would excitedly go over there most evenings after work to try out paint colours or make a list of what work needed to be done before we could move in. The garden was mostly deck and gravel with a overgrown tree at the bottom under which lurked a shed and some uncared for shrubs.

The first garden jobs that I noted down were to trim back the tree and reclaim some of our garden and then to dig out the gravel that surrounded the decking so that I could gain more space for plants.

But I was still hankering after more growing space so after peering through the gaps in the decking and lifting a few boards to see what lay beneath, we took it up to reveal the paving underneath and then lined the beds with a few rows of bricks to match up with the curved corners.

Getting there! But then we decided to build our garden room which meant that I would lose those shady flower beds at the end of the garden. So to compensate, we enlarged the curved flower beds in the middle of the garden. We also lost the right-hand fence during some stormy weather while we were in the midst of the building project so we replaced it with a nicer one.

And here is the latest shot of the garden, the photo above was taken a year ago so things are starting to get more established now. It's funny to think that there is actually more available square-footage in the very first photo of the garden (before we did any work) yet to me it actually looks smaller!

But I still have plans, albeit on a much smaller scale! This time I'm going to tackle the part of the garden that I never photograph (and for good reason!) It's a little bit of a mess, I use it as a pot dumping ground and an area to store compost. Currently it's not an overly attractive spot but when I saw this photo I was inspired to recreate it as much as possible.

 There's no reason why my pot storage area could not be pretty and practical!