More attention to the garden required!

Spent much of the bank holiday weekend tidying up the garden. Weeding, pruning, turning over the soil...

Now it looks a little tidier and my body is considerably achier.

We have a guy coming around to value our house for our upcoming remortgage, so a tidy garden could only help improve his opinion of our home sweet home.

We have plans to work our garden into a traditional "english country garden" style, with plants overgrowing all over the place and a laissex-faire attitude to weeding. Our only problem is that the previous owner had exactly the opposite attitude. Leaving shale and gravel everywhere to discourage weeds and rather underwhelming choice of plants.

We have a lot of work ahead getting all the gravel up so we can do a bit of planting.

We're also considering having vegetables growing in planters and baskets to supplement our kitchen stocks.

Watch this space!

Winter doldrums

Garden is deep in winter slumber. Half overgrown with weeds in places. The decking having a coating of grime that I will strive to remove when the weather gets a bit better.

When we have such big plans for the garden, it is frustrating to have to wait out the winter months before we can put any of our plans into action. Frustrating, but probably better for our family bank balance.

As I come from a family of gardeners, I feel pressure to have our back garden transformed into a little patch of paradise as soon as possible. Both my Dad and Granddad were big gardeners, spending a lot of their free time looking after their respective patches. Both of them had large gardens. Mine is smaller, but I hope to mould it into something they both would be proud of and happy to work in.

Big plans

Managed to pay a little overdue attention to the garden this last weekend. Mostly weeding and tidying up. Some pruning, ready for winter. Most markedly of all, though, we measured the dimensions of our garden. Vital task if we are to complete the massive makeover we intend for 2017.

Just a little over 9m by 5m is a fairly modest size for a back garden. Our front garden came already pretty much as we wanted it, so won't be getting much attention from us and isn't included in these plans. We intend to pull up the paving slabs that constitute the upper part of our drive and lay a lawn there. Somewhere for our daughter to play, considering we don't really use our garage or back garden to store our little Vauxhall Corsa.

Then the decking, that we had originally planned to pull up, is being kept. The location is just such a sun trap and so right-feeling that we already dream of lazy summer afternoons and late evening drinkies there.

Well, the plotting and planning are, at least, something to keep our minds busy over winter.

Getting a little overgrown

Since we moved into this home just over a year and a half ago, our garden has been woefully underutilised and underappreciated. At the moment, it stands overgrown and uncared for. This is partly because we aren't really sure precisely what we want to do with it.

I've had a look at the garden planning websites online, but find myself a little disappointed by them. Considering the miracles of modern technology, I was half expecting being able to spend a couple of hours designing our dream garden with a fully interactive and user friendly interface and then taking a virtual stroll through the garden-to-be through some wonderfully rendered 3D world.

In reality, the interface of each designer program I tried was awkward, frustrating and just plain unfathomable. Could someone not manage to create something a little easier to work with?

Still, that isn't really any kind of valid reason for ignoring my garden responsibilities. Next year will see our little suburban garden flourish. I hope.

Article: Chelsea Flower Show

The Guardian: Changing Chelsea: modernising the Chelsea flower show. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwtZylgSU

News: Gardening for all?

The Telegraph: Chelsea Flower Show: Alan Titchmarsh hits back at claims gardening is preserve of middle class. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwi4ud_SQ

Back garden - as it stands now..

Okay, so here is (most of) the back garden as it stands today.

I say most of as the drive down the side of our house leads to our garage (or man cave) just to the right of this picture.

Our plan is (currently) to keep the decking at the back, level the garden area a little and add a lawned area for our daughter to play on.