A little bit of garden history

When we bought our house three years ago, the previous owners left behind a tired, neglected garden. It was, granted, full of trees and shrubs that seemed to be thriving; but a closer look at the soil revealed no worms or bugs. The borders had been mostly taken over with ivy, and the leylandii had started to get scraggly and had a slightly menacing look in their eye. It was obvious that no-one had cared for the garden for some time.

The allotment at the back of the garden was extremely overgrown. It was all brambles and nettles; the grass was as tall as us!

When we moved in, we decided to undertake a huge overhall of the whole garden and allotment. The allotment was seen to first, with the reasoning that it had to feed us and therefore had greater priority.

In the first year we cleared the site and made the first of our raised beds. My sister kindly donated some autumn-fruiting raspberries and a clump of comfrey (both of which have performed amazingly every year and I will never be without either again).

The second year saw the exciting delivery of the polytunnel, which was great fun to put up and, even if it is slightly wonky, it does a fantastic job. A polytunnel is a great piece of kit to add to a garden - it has lengthened our growing season considerably, and besides I love the smell of a polytunnel. It has an irresistible damp earthy smell.

This is our third year and we are really now beginning to see our hard work pay off. We're able to just maintain our allotment now, with no more radical building and re-designing.

At the end of last year I decided to start working on the garden. This was something new to me completely - to garden for beauty rather than for eating. There's a lot more to consider: colours, architectural features, texture, flowering times etc but I think I'm slowly getting the hang of it. So far, I have cleaned up the back border (which was previously full of a twisted mass of ivy and old shrubs, not to mention the huge concrete post that needed extracting); I have created a woodland garden underneath the laylandii and a cherry tree garden in the far corner. It's is all coming together slowly but surely.

And so last weekend I found myself clearing the side border of the garden. I hadn't yet attempted to tackle this border and it was full of old strawberry plants, brambles and grass, but it all needed to come out. The two cats looked on intently as I disturbed all the lizards that were sheltering in there. I haven't finished by any means, but it does look an awful lot better already. I've started to feed the soil with our compost from the allotment too, as I'm finding that there is very little life in the soil (as with the back border). I have sown some annuals from seed and I already have some cuttings that are ready to go out too, so planting it up will be no problem.

I also took the opportunity to plant our two clematis at either side of Cem's pergola and they are looking mighty handsome already!