Last year I wrote some update posts for the work we’d done when we first got the keys to our house. I shared our living room transformation and our upstairs transformation. While there’s still so much I want to do in the house, one of my major bugbears is the garden. I mentioned in my garden inspiration post back in March that even though we knew we were getting quite a large garden we didn’t fully know the extent of it until the day we got the keys.
As you can see from the pictures I took below on the day we got the keys the garden was extremely overgrown as the house had been empty for almost 2 months and to be honest it didn’t look like it had had a lot of TLC before that either. We had masses of ivy growing all over the back wall, dead trees down the side of the garden and two conifers that completely blocked to view of the garden and made the lower patio seem really closed in. There were weeds in every bit of the planter wall and patches of dead grass everywhere. The trees on the other side of our fence were leaning heavily on the fence and blocked a lot of sunlight later in the day.
So within a couple of weeks my Dad had been round and chopped down the ivy, the conifers, all the dead trees in the garden and cut back some of the branches of the trees over our fence. While it certainly made it look neater, it was still very bland and ugly.
This year I decided we were at least going to make a start on making the garden look pretty. Like anything with home renovations, sorting a garden out is not cheap at all, so when you own a patch of land the size of a small field then we’re talking big bucks which is why transforming our garden is going to have to be done in phases. However I’m so pleased with what we’ve achieved so far, I finally have a garden that I’m not ashamed of!
So here’s what we’ve done so far:
- Josh and his Dad cut down a couple of the trees that were against our fence earlier in the year. This has protected our fence and given us so much more sunlight all day round.
- We painted the fence a nice bright ‘Autumn Red’ colour. I don’t think the fence has ever been painted and it looked so bland. Not only has painting it protected it against the rain but it’s brightened up the garden a massive amount.
- We planted flowers in the old planters where the conifers once were. This frames the garden so much better than the ugly trees did and makes the patio area nice.
- We attached solar fairy lights to one fence. I love the style of the multi coloured bulbs and it adds a lovely warm glow to the garden on an evening.
- We planted a palm tree and put solar lights around the bottom of it. I think we’ve settled on eventually wanting a bit of a Floridian feel to our garden so a baby palm was a cheap and easy place to start.
I think just these few simple things have made a massive difference to our garden already and I’m excited to start thinking about what projects we can begin next year. I think I may do another garden inspiration post next spring and discuss that next phase in our project then but for now I’m beyond happy with what we’ve achieved.
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