The front garden is starting to take shape.  The new grass is germinating and the crab apple has survived being uprooted and moved and is now in full blossom.

Germinating grass 18 April

The crab apple looks particularly good against the cherry blossom from next door.

Crab apple blossom 18 April

The anti-cat fence is still up at the moment, but once that comes down we will be able to crack on with planting up the herb bed.

We haven’t yet started work on the back garden, but planning is under way.  At the end of March we did a one-day design school with Adam Frost.  This was very helpful because of the way that he broke the design process down.  The stage that we had not concentrated enough on was consideration of what sort of shapes we should have within the overall design.  We knew what we wanted the garden to do (some space for vegetables, cover for birds, sitting space, summer colour, winter structure and most prosaically space for a rotary clothes dryer), but had started to leap straight to plants without breaking the garden up so that we could see how it would deliver the functionality we wanted.

At the end of the school Adam ran a clinic on the garden issues facing all of the participants and helped us to get to grips with an overall structure.  A swift photo of his sketches then got turned into a more detailed plan.

A quick sketch snapped with a phone

A detailed back Garden Plan

To achieve this we will need help with hard landscaping and all being well that will start in July, so the garden will be up and running this summer.