House Tour – Our garden…….so far

I thought it might be nice to do a bit of an update on some more of the house, this time we’re looking at the garden. Our last house had a small shared yard, shared with some pretty grumpy and dog hating neighbours, so having an actual garden is quite exiting to all 3 of our little family members. Flash in particular is loving having somewhere to play and sunbathe and chase birds.

This is the garden on the day we moved in; 

On the day we moved in Flash started investigating (i.e disappearing into for a scarily long time) the mess of bushes at the bottom of the garden. So when we decided to take a look where he was disappearing to, it turned out that about half the usable space we had outside was being taken up by these bushes and I’m yet to discover what the point of bushes are, apart from a place for Flash to hide.

On the good side, it’s full of flowers, rose bushes, and peonies and honeysuckle. The lady we bought from obviously loved the garden before she got ill and had spent a lot of time making it pretty, but it had clearly got the better of her in recent months.

Jim’s mum is a gardening wizz, she loves it, and offered to come over and help sort the space out. It was her first job in the house. And I couldn’t believe how much she got done in 2 days. (Well, in one day really as she had to stop as she’d stacked up all the debris in the middle of the grass ready for taking to the tip and ran out of space, then we hijacked her for a trip to Ikea.)

Check the yellow dust by the tree. Loved it. 

Once all the debris was moved, we called my dad and his chainsaw in to hack away at the roots and the bulk of the big bushes, again creating a huge pile of rubbish. One of the bushes was bright yellow when cut open which added a fun dimension to the dust floating about too! It took them a couple of days but once they were done, we were all amazed at how much more space they’d uncovered. See, this is the garden after;

The random tennis ball is a permanent feature
We were lucky that one of the bars I work for was having new garden furniture so we got some of the old stuff which has saved us a small fortune. Who knew that garden furniture cost so much money? Not me.

Erm, yes, we do have branded garden furniture. What of it?

And I’ve added some fairy lights to the patio area (can you call it that?) to make it a little prettier, because, honestly, when do fairy lights not make everything better? And we’ve brought in a few of our plants from the other house too, but mostly we’re just loving having some outside space of our own. Breakfasts in the sun have become my favourite. It’s also become a great place for slightly drunken chat with the neighbours who seem to be out in their garden alllllll the time, mostly slightly drunk too!

Remember my snowboard bench? Here it is in it’s new home. 
(excuse the colours here. No idea what’s going on!)


So, what are the plans for the future when all the money and all our time isn’t all consumed with the inside of the house?

  • We’re planning on re-seeding the lawn but I read that autumn is the best time to do this so we might wait (yes, my 18 year old self would be totally horrified at that statement but she’d probably feel better knowing that it’s about 99% certain that I’ll be calling my dad in to do it for us) I also want more grass adding up to the about the tree. 
  • Talking of the tree, we need to cut it back to let more sunlight into the garden, it’s so big that it cuts out all the light during the middle of the day. I’d also like to install a swing onto the tree just because I think that would be awesome. 
  • We’re going to pull down the old outside loo (next to the table) and put something up there that isn’t ugly and already falling down, probably a shed to house outside stuff like strimmers and bikes and that sort of stuff.
  • I want to add pots of herbs all the way along the bottom of the fence, so when you walk outside that’s the first thing you see. 
  • We need to replace the fence all the way down with something a bit more Flash proof. And the gate. And paint them both an awesome colour (turquoise or pink i think). And then hang planters of flowers and herbs all over them. 
  • Add an area at the bottom of the garden for growing veg and fruit and the likes. I’ve missed my homegrown fruit and veg this year. 
  • Move all the huge planters and the random bits of stone that spiders hide around out of the garden and replace with something prettier. Or paint them and plant nice stuff in them at least! 
  • And one day – repave the concrete area so it’s not horrible to walk on barefoot and doesn’t look crappy! 
The list could go on for forever, but what would you do with the space?

4 comments

  1. Great news that you'll be able to get your hands on the garden furniture, it looks like a great garden and there has been such progress made on it! I hope the fruit & veg garden gets up and going, that will be amazing x

    1. We had it in the last house in small areas and I loved growing stuff. Am very excited to get it up and running in this garden. One day. Hopefully by next spring and planting time.

  2. Oh it's interesting to know about the reseeding the lawn, I was wondering if autumn or spring would be the best way to go because some of our lawn around the old maple tree could do with having some new grass added in. It looks a nice garden and what a difference already with cutting all those bushes back! Your list is about as long as mine when it comes to the garden.

    1. The garden list is a bit of a never ending one isn't it. There will always be things to do. And don't get me started on the mess that is the front of the house!
      I think I might go autumn with the grass then it can grow lots over winter (or that's the plan) but it's warmer here so it might be different for you.
      Hope you are loving having the space as much as me. x

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