The garden - how it begins

How the back garden looked at the start

Gardening is a new hobby for me. I've never had more than a small, decked balcony before, so it's a new experience to have a whole outdoor space to deal with.

A garden was a must-have criterion for us when we were searching for a house, even if that meant being a little further away from the centre of town. You just can't beat having a great barbecue in your own garden, as much as we used to love lugging everything down to the beach (and back) once a week in the summer.

Our little house has two gardens in fact - a very small area out the front and about 50m² at the back.

The first little planter to go

When we moved in, it was clear that the previous owners had been quite keen gardeners, but also clear that they hadn't updated the garden in some years. Apart from a large, shady bed running down the north-facing side, the main features of the garden were a number of raised brick and concrete beds, a small, unloved, lumpy and patchy lawn with a paved path weaving down the middle, a large and slightly dilapidated old shed and a large, overgrown and silted-up pond, made in the same style as the brick and concrete beds.

There's also an old patio that is on such a slope that you can't put a table on it without propping up one side of it with bricks (at least not if you want to use it).

Now the pond gets it!

Clearly, it needed (and very much still needs) a bit of work.

Having not done any gardening before, I had no idea where to start or what to do first. One thing I did know though, is that the pond had to go. I'm not keen on the old raised beds either, so breaking up these old structures was top of my list.

Going...

So far I've smashed up the pond, a small raised bed near the bottom of the garden and a large one next to the house. I have lugged close to a ton of concrete and earth down to the tip, in multiple trips, but still have a garden full of bricks that need to go.

And of course, the best thing about living in a mid-terrace is that everything has to go through the house.

Two large raised beds remain - I've bunged a few plants in them for now, and a good number of spring flowering bulbs have also gone in.

Gone.

The only other substantial change so far is a new fence we had to put in after the old one blew down.

Next, the patio. I did consider having a go myself, but we've decided at the same time to have the steps down from the house to the garden (we live on a hill) redone, which isn't a job I can tackle, so it makes sense to get a landscaper in to the do whole job for us. They're going to rebuild the steps, changing the design of them, grub-up the old patio and replace it with a new one which will extend the whole width of the garden, covering up the space where the pond used to be.

As for the rest of it - I don't yet know, but it may involve a fair amount of gravel and wooden planters. And a new shed at some point.