A House Update: The Garden Revamp

I’m constantly aware that there is still so, so much to do in the house but at the moment we’re waiting on our plastered to come and skim the hallway and the spare bedroom before I can crack on with those jobs, so I have turned my attention away from the house and to the garden. Well, I actually turned my attention to it ages ago when my dad and I picked out fence panels and then I secretly hoped I’d go on holiday and it would all get done by someone else. Unfortunately for me, my dads gardening friend seems to have gone a bit awol so I’m just going to pick up the spade and get on with it myself! 

Here is where we started with the garden – lots of green space for the dogs to get lost in and lots of wasted space taken up by the green. 

So far we’ve* cleared a whole load of scrubs that took over the back end of the garden, dug up a huge bit of concrete that held the washing line up, planted some grass and removed a couple of bin bags of random other plants, cut back the huge tree to let in more light and get rid of all the leaves and strimmed my leg whilst cutting the grass.

There’s still a LOT to do though. A lot, lot. But I have a plan. And for once it’s not just in my head. 

But in order to get this plan into place I need to tackle the ground and get it cleared before we can go forwards. Last weekend, I spent my time digging up a blackberry bush that seems to be trying to take over the garden, cutting down some ivy that may or may not have been holding up the wall at the bottom of the garden (I think that we might find if that was the case soon. Oooooops), and I spent some time sawing up and bringing down some almost dead trees – this may or may not have ended with me being smacked in the face by a branch before ending up on the floor in a pile of mud. But there are still a whole load of scrubs to clear, a couple of trees stumps to remove (and I am guessing their roots) and a hell of a lot of weeds that have appeared since it was cleared of shrubs. 

 

What we need to do now is figure out how to replace the rickety old fence and gate that’s half wood and half mesh. Decide whether to dig up all the grass we currently have and relay it (it’s a bit, erm, random), or try and patch it and sew new grass in the space we’ve cleared of weeds. Buy a couple of raise planters – one big one for the bottom of the garden for vegetables, and a thinner one to sit by the house for herbs. De-weed all the shrubs round the edges of the garden to tidy them up. Find some butterfly attracting plants for the edges of the grass (I’d love to have bee friendly ones but Flash likes trying to eat bees and im not sure its the best plan!). Decide what to do about the out house – do we tear it down or patch it up? Oh, and build a big bbq some where. 

The big thing is I’m not very green fingered so I’m going to have to enlist some help. Hopefully someone out there will have some tips for me. Please send me your advice. Please. And if you don’t have any advice, please send me some clues of gardeners to call when it all goes wrong!