Planning the Garden at Number 27 (Post Martin!)

If you've seen my 'Planning the Garden at Number 27 (Pre Martin!)' post, you will know that I moved into Number 27 in 1992 and by 2003 not much had happened in the garden.

Martin moved in during October 2007 and between then and June 2008 there was more activity and progress than I had made on my own in the previous 10 years.  I put it down to the garden design course I attended with mum (and Martin's help, of course!).

You can see this progress really clearly on the pictures below.  The left hand picture was taken in 2003, and the right during June 2008.


In just 8 months we had added a 2nd shed - absolutely necessary to house all of the stuff that Martin needed to keep ....... 'just in case'.  It must be a man thing.

We had also built an additional patio on the left of the garden.  You need to step down to this and sitting there really makes you feel like you are 'in' the garden.

We'd also extended the border across the bottom and the left hand side of the garden.  I must confess, we had a man in to do this!!  We then planted this out, including another three trees across the bottom for more privacy.

We then built our first raised bed so we could start growing our own salad and veg.  As you know from more recent posts, this is something we've really got into and have carried on with.

On a totally practical note we built a path to the shed.  That definitely was as a result of the Garden Design course.  One thing you should always do, is be able to get around your garden in all weathers.

We added a water butt to the back of our first shed but, as you can already see, this had started to become a bit of a 'spare wood' graveyard.  My husband has a real thing about collecting wood ...... 'just in case'. And, if 'just in case' never happens, he loves to burn it.


We had also made some considerable improvements to the top patio.  We'd replaced the green plastic patio set with a wooden one - never again, I must say!!  Wooden patio furniture needs a lot of love and attention.

We'd also built a wooden, yes more wood, arbor, and you can start to see the appearance of a variety of pots and a bird table.  You can also see the new patio on the right.


These pictures show the left hand side of the garden, with the new border and first of the raised vegetable beds, considerably improved - even the grass looks greener!

Here, you can really see the impact that the work we've done on the bottom patio, shed and seating area, has made to how we can use this part of the garden.  We quite often sit and have breakfast here on a sunny morning.

Here's a better picture of the raised bed, fully planted.  You can see we've got a compost bin at the back of the new shed and the foxgloves are looking really good.  These are still spreading themselves around the garden to this day.

My next post will show you how the garden looks now, compared to 2008. Looking at it now, I think we did wonders in those first six months. Whilst there has been more progress since then, looking at these pictures now makes me realise that we really have slowed down - can't say it feels like that though!!