My New Garden Design.

Well, I have to say it was lovely to get so many comments from people on my last blog post, I'm so happy that there are still some of you out there :-)

I have been looking back through all the photos I've been taking over the last few months, wondering where to start and I think I will start with the garden. In my very first blog post my garden was a boring, bare rectangle of grass that mostly resembled a field, probably because that's exactly what it used to be. The person who converted our house from foundry workers cottages, badly, I might add, ran true to form and basically just left the front garden to grow wild.

At the time, I didn't have much money and keeping the grass down and managing to get it fenced in so the dogs had a safe place to run was as much as I could manage and over the years, I have added little bits and pieces to the garden and now, although it's still a rectangle consisting mostly of grass, it's slightly less boring. But not much! That, however, is about to change. Over the last few weeks, there has been lots of measuring and sourcing of materials and a gazillion ideas pinned on a virtual mood board and then there was a LOT of garden designing and planning and a fair old amount of, shall we say, "discussion" about where, what and how things should be done and finally, thanks to my husband ......... drum roll please ........ the finished plan can now be revealed.

Isn't it fabulous. This is hopefully what my garden will look like a few months from now. We have already started and have spent every spare weekend preparing the space. There's been a lot of digging and turf stripping and clearing and a couple of weeks ago, a big lorry with a crane on the back delivered 2 tonnes of granite setts for the pathways and edging. A delivery of compost will be arriving next week to start filling up the flower beds and more sand and cement will be arriving in the not too distant future so I can finish concreting in more of the setts ...... I'm actually getting quite good and cementing the little buggers in place and have only managed to drop them on my toes twice. It's hard work but it's very slowly starting to look less like a field :-)

Digging the trench for the first lot of setts to be cemented in. I'm getting very good at it now :-)

Between the apple trees, the turf will be stripped off, soil added and then bark chippings will be put on top and some shade-loving plants will be planted to add some colour.

Roughly laying out the setts to see what they look like. 

Around the edge of the lawn will be flower beds full of cottage garden plants.

Harriet and Bluebell helping in the garden. 

So, watch this space. I will keep posting progress photos so you can see how it's coming along. And if anyone has any suggestions and ideas for plants that don't mind shade I would love to hear from you.