Our Garden



		2001

		The garden was a blank canvas when we moved in 4 years ago, only having 3 very small rose bushes in the wall boarder and a mixture of moss / weeds / grass that called itself a lawn. Our first summer in 2001 the garden looked quite full as I had brought all my pots from our last house, so it didn't look too bad. We tried growing tomato's for the first time and Paul grew several pots of chillies, unfortunately the tomato's got diseased so we didn't get to eat any.



		The pots are nice to have because you can move them around and change displays but the downside is that they are susceptible to vine weevil, drying out and becoming root bound. Paul and I treat the pots for vine weevil each year between March and April which is quite time consuming. In the winter of 2001 the grass became a mud pitch acting like a sponge with all the rain, Obi would decorate our beige lounge carpet with his muddy paw prints at which point we realised that we would have to do something fairly radical with the "lawn".

		2002

		I designed our new look garden together with Paul, taking into account the soil type, the lighting, available space and our individual wants and needs. This is what we came up with;



		We have yet to put in the pond and water feature but will hopefully get round to doing this in the not too distant future.

		2003

		We had the garden landscaped by the Grubmleweeds, a gardening group from the centre where I work. They removed the "lawn" and put Scottish Pebbles down over a membrane, finishing off with railway sleeper stepping stones and some patches of cobbles for contrast. We were very pleased with their work and the final results !!! Work began in April just after this picture was taken, you can see how boggy the "lawn" is, we had to put cardboard down so Obi didn't get stuck in the mud. You can see at the back of the fence I have planted an evergreen Honeysuckle (2002) to help obscure the chain fence over time.



		These pictures were taken near the end of the transformation, just the pebbles, cobbles and plants to be completed.



		Choosing the right type of plants for the boarders was difficult because of the clay soil holding in lots of moisture, no direct sunlight in the winter but full sunlight in the summer for most of the day. This has been a learning curve for me, I made some mistakes at the beginning but have learned a lot about plants and gardening in the process. 2003 was the best year so far for the garden, the plants put on a great display throughout the hot summer. In August I planted some more plants behind the wooden fence (another Honeysuckle, Winter Jasmine, two Potato Vines) to help the existing Honeysuckle cover the chain fence.

		Here are some pictures of the garden in the summer of 2003





		2004

		The garden now looks much fuller although the plants didn't do as well this year as they did in 2003. The plants behind the fence are coming along nicely.



				The picture on the left is looking down from the back bedroom onto the lower patio. The plant in the top right corner is a Castor Oil Plant (Fatsia.Japonica) which I've acclimatised to remain outside all year round. Buying these that have already been hardened off can be very expensive. The one in the picture (I have 3) has reached 6ft and flowered for the first time this winter.