When
we moved into our house our garden was a mess, it had vast amounts of decking,
but it was built up really high on a platform, with a huge shed on. You
could see straight into our neighbours gardens from the decking, which as
you can imagine they hated. One side of the garden was lined
with huge conifers; which absorbed so much space, and light, they had to
go. Other than that the grass was half dead, and there was not a single plant
or shrub. Yes, it was a blank canvas, but it has turned out to be a
money pit that had to be completely deconstructed. We had to start
from scratch. It has taken years to get it right, we are
not finished but finally feel like we have a usable garden
When you are planning your garden it is important
to consider many factors. For us the main factor was the sun, and creating
areas where we can enjoy the sun throughout the day. We have a long garden but
it is very narrow, because of this we spent ages thinking about how to set the
garden out, where to put sitting areas to get the best out of the
weather.
Now I need to make this clear, I cannot garden at
all. Chris is an expert gardener; he spends hours in the garden. My involvement
is much more on a consultancy basis. He would never let me hear the last of it
f I gave the impression that I was anyway involved the building or
planting.
Our first area gets the sun from sunrise, and
enjoys the sun until about 2pm, lovely for breakfast and great for entertaining
when friends visit. It is framed with flowers and shrubs on three sides. This
gives colour all year round and has been designed in such a way that there are
always different flowers in bloom up until October.
