Garden Makeover 2013 / 14

This is my second big garden project.*

Jennie and I bought our first home in August 2012 – a 1930s three bed terrace in Warwick. We’d been planning to buy for years, but were spurred into action by firstly the birth of our daughter Bella, and shortly after, our landlord giving us notice he was selling and we’d have to move on. Cap in hand, we asked our parents for help raising a deposit. We are exceedingly lucky to have such generous and resourceful parents – thank you.

In the mortgage application process we listed our previous addresses and in the last five years we had a combined total of eight homes – it was time to settle down! Even my tireless parents were getting weary of helping us move house again and again (and again) – so we fixed our interest rate for 5 years and agreed to stay put for at least this period.

The house was in great condition and had received a neutral makeover to prepare it for sale, so settling in was easy. The garden however, was an entirely different matter. It was vast compared to our previous houses – maybe sixty feet long and half as wide. In one corner was a paved area with a rotating washing line, and in the other were two large sheds. In between was nothing but lawn – an amazing blank canvas to work with!

Here are the pics from Rightmove (before we started any work):

Lifting a tile from the paved corner we found a foot of concrete beneath – foundations for a structure? Prep for a rear facing garage perhaps? We’ll never know, but we decided the sheds could sit on it to give us maximum lawn space. The empty sheds wouldn’t weigh much but were very fragile as any ageing, flimsy sheds are. With bribes of cake we enticed enough family members around to help us in the task and with the help of many nylon straps slung under each shed we manoeuvred them to their new home. We turfed the spot they had been and got 25% more lawn. So far so good – the next task (for me anyhow) was to choose where to have our new veggie patch.

We chose the bottom left corner as it had plenty of light, was close to the sheds and could be separated from the rest of the garden by some kind of fence or barrier (more on that below.) With Bella napping twice a day, on the first Saturday I got the chance, I grabbed a spade and threw myself into an activity i was bred for. Imagine my shock when the spade hit rock three inches under grass, finding half bricks and concrete rubble under a thin layer of turf. Imagine my anger and frustration in finding the same around it for six feet in every direction. We have to assume that the previous owner – an old school builder – buried his rubbish rather than pay for it to be dealt with. All sorts came out of the ground – six foot long concrete fence posts, dozens of breeze blocks and much more. It was a very long and difficult task – sometimes more than a foot deep. Here is a pic from the first couple of days:

It took months to complete, and thanks to my dad’s help and his trailer we carted endless bags of rubble to the tip. A rough working out of the number of bags we shifted came to around two tonnes – what a mission!

Finally the earth was cleared and with many bags of premium horse muck the fallow land was well prepared for spring.

Jennie decided that a living willow hedge / fence (fedge) would be an interesting and different divider between lawn and sheds / veg plot. It would also grow high quickly, creating some screening from the overlooking four story block of flats at the bottom of the garden. We live by the river Avon, that is also lined with huge willows so it seems appropriate. Willow is nearly indestructible so Jennie actually ordered it online and found a very long cardboard box in the alley one day. We simply drove the thick ends into the ground and wove the uprights – tieing them together with cable ties. Here is a pic of the work in progress:

All the boring stuff was done so we moved onto arguing about what to plant where, after securing a quarter of the beds for herbs I let Jennie go mad with the rest which she did with help from my mum. Over time the beds have filled with a variety of beautiful stuff including a fig tree, bamboos, grasses and fennel with thornless blackberries and hops covering the fences rapidly. Jennie ordered several trees from the net (more huge boxes) – two apple, one cherry and a silver birch which we planted into islands in the lawn.
We debated how to carve up our veg patch like the treaty of Versailles – but we had so much more space than previous nearly everything we wanted could be accommodated (or so we thought.) From memory we had courgette, squash, peas, broad beans, beetroot, rhubarb, strawberries, gooseberries, black currents, red currants, corn (on the cob) spring onions and some salads leaves. Obviously this lots grew massively out of control and we could barely get at some of it to pick. We had a great crop – much more than we could eat.

As the 2013 August bank holiday came around we marvelled at the transformation we had accomplished in a single year – and started planning the next twelve months. The second year’s vegetable patch was much more restrained in terms of volume, and more focused on learning what grows best where and under what conditions. In the picture below you can see the set up (note willow on the left starting to get bushy.)

The crop was good and bad this year – we had lots of peas and strawberries and our first crop of gooseberries but the broad beans and black currants shrivelled or were devoured by bugs. We tried tomato plants in three locations – our conservatory, in some fairly cheap plastic green houses and in the soil against the fence. The crop was good in all places but exceptional against the fence – that must be the sunniest spot in the garden as the amount of fruit on the vine weighed it down to the point it needed support not to collapse entirely.

The next project was a brick BBQ that I’ve had on my wish list since I the epic one we had on honeymoon in Spain (see a pic here.) My dad and I had an awesome day of bonding where I learned how to mix mortar, lay bricks and point the mortar. The final result was very satisfying and although it has no straight lines anywhere in its construction, it’s not going to fall down any time soon. See the pics below:

We christened it with Chinese marinated chicken on the left hand side and Mediterranean veg on the right hand side, as per the intended design.

2014 August bank holiday came around and the garden was coming to some kind of maturity, and looking amazing. Bella is old enough to enjoy it now and spends hours in any weather with a variety of pursuits – from sand throwing to her daily pebble admin, digging up worms and picking blackberries to force feed to me. Here are a couple of ‘after’ shots – compare to the ones at the top to see how much it’s changed.