Last week I told you about our exciting news that we had moved house. With our new home comes a brand new garden to grow plants in and to transform and make our own. It was sad saying goodbye to our courtyard garden space where my passion for gardening really kick started, but I know that our new garden will take my interest and knowledge of gardening to a whole new level. I'm buzzing with excitement about our new space and I am looking forward to sharing it with you.
I can't tell you how energised I feel about this garden and the plans I have started to put together. For Mr C and I we are seeing it as a blank canvas and the chance to really shape and redesign the space. Our garden is a perfect size for us and will hopefully in time be a space that is easy to look after. In our new garden there is plenty of space to grow things in the ground and in containers, there is space to entertain, and most importantly we now have lots of light! We no longer have a sheltered and shady space where plants started to bolt for the light. Along with the benefits of having so much light, the downside is that our garden will now be exposed to the elements. I'm sure we will be learning as we go about what areas of the garden are effected by extremes of hot and cold weather!
So let me tell you a little about our new gardening spaces...eeek I’m so excited! We are lucky to have a small space at the front of our home to garden as well as a back garden. Our front garden is a typical narrow small space for a terraced home. We have lovely yellow and black tiles and a small gravelled space, in total measuring about 1 metre wide. We have a bay window which allows us to have three window boxes on the windowsills, remarkably our existing window boxes fit perfectly…it was meant to be! At the moment the geraniums are still flowering in the window boxes so I plan to leave them in there for a few more weeks and then look to move them into new pots and put them under cover for the winter. There's plenty of opportunity for container gardening at the front of the house and I'm looking forward to working out what to plant in the window boxes for the winter and what plants we could add to the space.
Our plans for the back garden are quite extensive and we hope to achieve a hefty garden redesign over the next few years. We would love to paint the back of the house to freshen and tidy it up, or if we can we would like to get back to the original brick. We plan to replace the concrete walkway and patio space with attractive paving which is in keeping with the victorian/edwardian style of our home, with the aim of creating a space to entertain. Many of the plants in the garden are over grown and will be removed with a fresh start on all the planting. We plan to remove the lawn and potentially create a space that has a feeling of a walled/kitchen garden with raised beds, a winding brick path, areas of gravel and a lean-to greenhouse. I'm hoping to have a combination of small vegetable patches, a herb garden, and a cut flower patch. We want to have a space that is productive and one that we can sit in and enjoy. It is a big project and will take quite some time to save and plan for, however for the time being we are going to do what we can to make the space more of our own.
One of my favourite features of our back garden are the brick walls that surround the space. Three walls frame the garden and they are all at different levels. The walls are a combination of grey stone at the back and variations of grey and red brick on the left and the right. Around the garden I have discovered a few lovely shrubs, a rose, honeysuckle, a small acer tree, and a few small fuchsia's that I really and will definitely try to keep in the redesign. We moved our pots, garden furniture, and cold frame with us to our new home and have added them to the space where we can.
The garden is changing as autumn is upon us. We have seen the leaves changing colour on the blueberry bushes to a deep red, we've harvested a few final courgettes, Mr C has cut back some of the herbs and has started drying them, and the marigolds are gradually dying and going to seed. The honeysuckle in the garden is still flowering and the fuchsia is also clinging onto flowers and adding a bit of colour and life to the space.
I'm looking forward to watching the space change during the seasons and becoming more acquainted with the plants that are here and how they grow. I'm going to be able to do more than just container gardening which I'm really excited about and I am really looking forward to learning a lot more about gardening too.
The changes aren't going to happen over night, we have lots of plans to make, money to save, and as we are heading into autumn and soon winter it will be a while before we start making any big changes.
I hope that you will join me in my new adventure of gardening. I'm looking forward to learning new things and turning our new garden space into something pretty, productive and a garden we have created ourselves that we will love even more.
Labels: container gardening, gardening, urban gardening
