Progress

You may remember that for the last four years, I've been begging for a new garden? Well, we have progress!

This is what we started with:

This is our garden in 2006 when we first moved in - predominantly an old out house and coal shed, lots of huge badly laid slabs and soil which was 95% old lumps of coal and chips of stone from when the house was first built in 1860.

This was about the prettiest it ever got:

In 2009, this happened (from bad to worse!):

So, this year, for it's 140th birthday, we decided to give the garden a long over due face lift! It has taken some time and we are still a long way from finishing, but we have progress!

At the start of 2010 - a lot of bricks and not much else!

We started by re building the brick wall, smashing this big ugly bit of concrete up and murdering the ivy (see challenge point number 24 and 25). June:

We replaced that with this (using the original York paving which was scattered around the garden and recycling bricks from the old out house). July:

Then we made a lovely square area of paving at the bottom of the garden - again, recycling bits of the out house. We put it on an angle like that to create a visual illusion of length and width (our garden has neither!) August:

We then laid the pattern for a winding path down the middle. We start and end the path quite wide but it narrows in the middle to fool the eye into thinking the space is much longer than it actually is.

Maddie seems to like it!

All we need now is to finish the path with some gravel (and set the bricks in), LOTS of planting to fill in the gaps all around the sides. That's where I come in. 

So, my plans for the planting.... climbing roses up the walls, lots of lavender and other nice fragrant (butterfly friendly) plants and herbs which will spread well and fall over the edges of the path and patio, chocolate cosmos up against the wall - the contrast of the dark red almost black against the red brick is lovely, hydrangea, I might sprinkle poppy seeds here and there as well. Can't wait to see it this time next year in full bloom!

You may have guessed, but the "we" throughout this post actually refers to the Royal We, meaning anyone other than me! Mainly Paul, Paul's Dad and our next door neighbour! Thanks boys! We were also lucky enough to have this garden designed for us by a lecturer in Landscape Architecture who Paul works with - and a fine job he did too! I love it. It makes the garden look so much bigger and I actually feel excited to sit out there now! I never thought there was much you could do with our garden, but it just shows, that with a bit of know how, you can achieve anything!

I also have an apology to make. I never did the draw for my gardening giveaway! I have been so busy with work over the last couple of months, my little blog has fallen well onto the back burner so my giveaway just completely went out of my head so for that, I am most sorry! Thank you for continuing to read me despite that! I will do something to make up for it soon - I promise!

Thank you all for being my cyber buddies and sticking around even when I didn't!

Kat xxx