We’re doing a garden makeover
This post is in collaboration with LionsHome
It has only been in the planning for fourteen years but we are finally doing a garden makeover. It was on the list of things to do as soon as we moved in, along with ripping out the bathroom and to be fair that hasn’t happened yet either, but this year we have decided it’s time for the garden to get its makeover.
One of the reasons we bought this house was for the garden but it was very much a blank canvas, long piece of lawn down the middle with a flower bed on one side and an area at the bottom of the garden that could be a vegetable patch with raised beds. All we have ever done is weed the long bed and strim the patch at the end. This year though, well this year we have a spent a fair amount of time plotting and planning.
And making a Pinterest board: (because we all know that something can’t happen until you have pinned it to a board on Pinterest)
First of all we are going to extend the patio because at the moment it is only big enough for our table and benches which means the patio doors hit them every time you open them. So the patio will be widened and then we can move them away from the house (and doors) to a shadier part of the garden. In their place we are going to put out door furniture and a firepit, somewhere to enjoy the sun going down in the evening, with the obligatory G&T, obviously. I wrote a post last year about how to build a gin garden and it would be fun to make more of a feature of that and to be able to sit around it, especially as it is now really well established and full of mint (it smells amazing).
We are also going to fence off the driveway so people can no longer walk down the side of our house and into our garden. Not only will this give us more privacy but it will mean we can use an area of stones that is currently a bit of a dead space into a dining area with our trusty pizza oven and a new barbecue, much like this one that I spotted on the LionsHome website this week. We inherited our current barbecue and it’s far too big for us so we have been looking to replace it for a while. There are so many to choose from we have had our eyes on something similar to the vidaXL for a long time so that would be a great addition to Chez Barrow.
We have ummed and ahhed about the piece of land at the end of our garden too. Currently it is higher than the rest of the garden and mostly dirt and rubble, until the weeds grow up and then it is vaguely green but it is also very shaded. There is a huge compost heap there, the shed and some really high fruit trees but we worry that the ground is far from suitable for planting into. We don’t know what happened down there before we moved in but it was clearly a dumping ground for builders and previous renovation works. Plus its height means that nothing will really drain. I have this idea in the back of my head to cover it in raised beds and planters so we can grow our own vegetables and not worry about the ground.
So if you know anybody who has any old railway sleepers, trugs or barrels will you send them my way please?
And if you know anybody who, having done a garden make over wants to get techy outdoors this post from French Design Blog featuring their Top 5 Tech Gadgets for Your Garden would be just the bedtime reading.
And if you fancy a G&T in the garden, do come round. Just make sure you use the front door and don’t try to come round the back!
Photo of garden and raised beds courtesy of Shutterstock