When John and I were buying our first house one of the biggest things I was looking for was a decent sized garden. Growing up I never had a real garden, just a concrete slab of a back yard. I had always wanted somewhere to relax after work and on days off, somewhere to have BBQs and somewhere for our children to play eventually. While the garden was sort of nice to start with, it wasn’t at all what I wanted.
Last summer my mum came to visit and started pulling up anything that was dead. That started me off on a mass clear out and over the course of a year, everything went!
There was no plants at all, no grass and certainly no gravel. We’d had a new fence put up in this time too as the old one was so mismatched, uneven and rotten. We figured we might as well get that done first before sorting anything else out.
As nice as it was to have cleared everything, the garden was pretty depressing. It was bleak and muddy and I hated it. I wanted it all sorted before we got to winter and Jackson could get even more muddy out there than he does now. Luckily, we have a friend who does gardens (he also did the fence) and got us sorted very quickly.
We have now had the majority of the garden turfed and decking is going in next weekend. I didn’t know what to do with each side of the shed and I didn’t want the weeds to grow back so we’re going to put bark down on top of some weed sheets so at least it all looks tidy. I cannot express just how happy I am with our garden now. It’s practical for us and the dog and it will be the perfect place for our child in a few years time. It might not be the fanciest of gardens but Jackson would probably eat any plants I put in there anyway!
