Improvement

Taken late last summer, this was the last photo before the changes made in our garden, it does look lovely, until you try to use the space. The big decking is a perfect family space other than flies and smells coming from next door, the decking is higher, the paving path is another different height, the lawn had loads of odd angles and was lower.

Photo taken last week from the same place, everywhere is the same level, the flower bed at the back of the lawn is now clearly seen from the sitting room, the veg beds behind are seen but the railings put them in a different part of the garden. The lawn is smaller as we made the paving outside the patio doors wider and made it into a rectangle. 

We have a new table, hubby saw it online at a bargain price, it goes with our original chairs and bench and can be made bigger when family arrive. I now have less pots in this area, over winter some cracked and I've not replaced them, only herbs around here and near the back door and handy for use.

Here is the plan I drew up, we did change one spot, the path along the garage we decided to run it down to the house, making the lawn not so wide and removing the corner inset in the lawn. We also paved all the way to the garage. In this plan the lawn does look much bigger, the plan is not to any true scale. 

Having spend a lot of money on the refit, plus we did loads of hard work ourselves, we were chatting, did we get what we wanted, hoped for, value for money spent. This was all done for me, hubby wanted to remove the decking and nothing more, I knew our garden was huge, and we were not using it all, I hoped for veg beds, my growing space and plenty of family space so three little ones could run around and play outside. 

Our first thoughts are we are both happy with the finished design, and the standard of work done, our landscaper made suggestions, which we took on board, after all he is the expert, he digested my plan, understood what we wanted, and created it and all on one level. I have done work before in the garden and then later changed it, no chance of that here, sitting on the patio side of the garden last summer helped us to see how we can now use all of the area. My growing area, which we can close off when the children are here, is perfect, we made the veg beds as big as we could, ensuring the paths between were not to tight, reusing everything from the decking. I am excited to be growing vegetables, I have most everything I need. One sad note as I looked through my garden purchase list, so much of my seeds and bits came from Wilko's, I am missing their shop in town, Wilko seeds are sold at The Range, but the store is not local. 

I have had comments about how tidy the garden looks, I'm outside every time I can be, even on cold days, I don't pop out when it's raining, we have a cat and she use the flower beds, Grace is getting older, so I do need to go out and clear up after her regularly. We have lots of different beds, so it is easy to tidy a bed quickly, I am always picking up leaves and bits, I adore dead heading when needed, it always leads to more blooms. Our garden is my healing place and my work in retirement.