The Garden - The starting point

I didn't take a picture of the garden as it was when I first started on it in 2009. But, it's been a slow evolution while I tried to work out what I was going to do with it, so over the last two years only a few things have happened to it. This is a picture of it in nearly it's original state. Disintegrating fencing on two sides, and an elder bush that had suckered and grown it's way to a 20' tree with about 6 decent trunks (the pic shows it halfway through being tamed, now it's been cut down to stumps at nearly ground level). The concrete paths, patio, and the manhole with the wonky concrete surround are as they are now. The veg bed has just been started on the right, and the compost bin is in. There was a 6' x 4' shed in the far-left corner of the garden that the elder was slowly growing through, so that went. So this pic is practically how the garden was - minus the veg bed (that was just more grass), minus the compost bin, and plus 50% more of that tree and a rotting, collapsing shed.

This is a plan of the garden as it is now, to give you an idea of size and layout....

I got a pond for my birthday last year, a pre-formed one, that I've put in. The veg bed has got a smaller bed, about a foot wide, added to the back where we gained a tiny bit more room when we had the rickety fencing replaced. I've added some 6' x 1' trellis that I got for Christmas (I tend to ask for garden things for pressies, you may have noticed) onto 4 of the concrete fence posts and I've run some vine wires along half of the back fence and all the righthand side fence. The fences are all painted green. If I had painted it red I would have drawn the eye out of the garden to the surrounding red brick houses. We haven't got a backdrop of greenery so the green fence keeps your eye in the garden and you don't notice it's overlooked so much now. There are a few more plants in pots around, waiting for the beds to be sorted to put them in. I've been collecting cheap plants as I've seen them, so I've built up a nice collection now and as I tend to buy cheaper smaller plants they've grown on to good sized plants for planting out now. I think if you buy a few small plants each year you can afford to be patient and wait for them to grow. You'll have last year's plants getting to a decent size by then, so there'll be something interesting to see still. Patience is a virtue if you want to save a few pennies.

This is a pic of the garden now. This shot was taken from just past the manhole cover, which is basically where most of the work has been done. I've got an apple tree in a large pot and a box ball that I've grown on from a tiny cutting in the other pot. (The pots, by the way, are plastic and were £2.99 and £3.99. As they are furthest away from the house you can't tell that they aren't terracotta, and I'm not bothered that they won't age, I like the new terracotta look.)

Looking back towards the house there's the uneven concrete slabs patio with turf growing between them (you can see where the washing line goes in this shot too, that's next to the manhole cover, do you ever see these fancy garden makeovers accommodating your washing line??). My blowaway greenhouse/temporary shed replacement is tucked into the corner where it gets the least wind, and it's further propped up by a concrete step under the window (I pressume that was put there so you could reach the top of the window to clean it? I use it to raise up my strawberry trough so the fruit doesn't hang onto the floor). This is the sunniest part of the garden. The house faces South-West, so the patio and veg bed are in sun for the majority of the day.

Here is the small concrete bit outside the kitchen extension. This is the bit I am thinking of turning into the Moroccan courtyard. I have already made a couple of Moorish-look mosaic pieces for it (I've got a matching pot in my Josara shop). I've got a fatsia plant in a pot in the corner that's adding to the atmosphere, and a blue ceramic ball ornament that is the Moorish blue colour that reminds me of Morocco too. (I bought that ceramic ball about 8 years ago, funny how things find their place eventually). It will take some doing to get the lush courtyard feel into such a small space, but the start is there.

So, there you have it, the garden, as is.

Over this last couple of years, as I've been tinkering with areas, I've realised that it does help to name areas when you are deciding what to do with a garden. You see it all the time on gardening programmes like Gardener's World. 'The Long Border', 'The Cottage Garden', 'The Jewel Garden'. I kind of thought it was for telly reasons so you knew where they were filming, but it actually does help focus you to plants and ornaments to give a feel to an area. For example, the fence at the bottom of my garden faces North-East, so the bottom left of the garden is in shade nearly all day. That is now going to be the Woodland Garden and I will find shade-loving woodland plants to go in there. The Moroccan Courtyard will lean me towards certain plants and ornaments. I've seen the light on garden area-naming.

Here is the named-area plan for the garden to evolve into -

That's caught you up to speed on what's what, so I'll see you on the next installment.