Apologies for the motley selection of photo's - these have been taken over the course of three years on various camera's. They aren't that pretty but they are truthful...My latest preoccupation is the garden, yes I still have loads to finish inside but after being cooped up all winter I want/need a change of project. The leaking roof, rising damp and no working kitchen or bathroom paled into insignificance when we saw the garden of our house, it was big for the area and had so much potential - the veg patch! The wood oven!The cut flower garden! The roses! We fell in love and got carried away with our dreams. Our dreams are still very much dreams but I have been sneaking in roses over the summers and Dan has a working veg patch so we've taken baby steps.
To make things more complicated/exciting the garden is split into two halves the front part (above) is west facing and the back part (below) is north facing.
Like with so much of the house we've had to get in professional help, we really want to do it all ourselves but with weekends being so precious we've had a great garden man in this week to cut back the out of control ivy, sort the trees and replace the broken fencing. I'm beyond excited as new pockets of the garden have revealed themselves and now I feel like we've got a blank canvas to play with. As we're heading into our fourth summer (which I can't believe) I thought I give a little recap of what we've done so far.
Year one - we (Dan) cut back all the grass and I removed some of the plants which we really didn't like, mainly conifers.
Year two - Dan started to build his veg patch, I cleared the greenhouse and began to plant seeds and buy plants for the beds ( I was pregnant throughout the summer so couldn't do that much)
Year three - Dan finished his veg patch and got totally obsessed with broad beans. I weeded and mulched all the flower beds as brambles and bindweed had started to take over. I didn't do too well with my seedlings as I tried to do too many at once but some of the plants I'd brought really started to flourish.
I've learnt so much over the last few years and drink up any information I can. This year I feel much more confident about what I'm growing and hope there's a bit of budget left to start investing in some really lovely plants.
I'm not sure how interesting these posts are to you so I'm mainly writing for myself and to keep a record of what I've learnt. I'm a total novice when it comes to gardening but I love experimenting and seeing what works and what doesn't. I'm finding the best way to learn is through trial and error the above was a trial that went right I used a Sarah Raven seed mix for shady places and got a glorious carpet of colour for very little work. I'm definitely going to get some more of these for other beds, I really don't like seeing bare patches of ground so might try one for sunny spots to fill in the gaps whilst I work out what other plants to invest in.
Now that the garden is clear, my plan for the next few months is to give the above bed a good feed (its south facing and so dry), give the rest of the beds a weed and get my seedlings started. With seedlings I'm trying to plant a few every couple of weeks so I don't get over whelmed and not plant the whole packet, less is definitely more.
If there are any books, websites or Instagram accounts you recommend then I'd love to hear them - I'm trying to gather all the knowledge I can, have a great weekend. xx
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