With the arrival of warmer weather and long days giving lots of extra light, the new grass at the front has now taken off properly and we’ve been able to dismantle the cat fence.

New Lawn 22 May

Having full access again has meant that we’ve been able to make a start on the herb garden, including stepping stones to facilitate picking.  After another thorough weed we’re planning to collect and clean old pea gravel from the back garden to top dress and finish off this bed.

Herb bed 22 May

We still haven’t decided on the long-term planting for the front border, so this is about to be filled with spare dahlias from the allotment to provide a burst of summer/early autumn colour.

Talking of autumn, the passing of the year can be seen on the crab apple with the setting of fruit now very evident.  Crab apple jelly in a couple of months – with some fruit left for the local blackbirds.

Crab apples setting May 2019

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.

Work has progressed on the front garden over the past few weeks. In the first instance, we lifted the membrane that had been down for the past couple of months and worked over the soil that had become very compacted under stores of building materials.  We’ve also constructed a bin store and planted round this to soften it up.

We have decided to use a crab apple rescued from the back garden as a central feature of the front garden and got this planted last week.

Making progress 23 March

The herbs haven’t made it into the ground yet, but are ready and waiting.

Herbs awaiting a home

This weekend, the focus was on preparing and seeding a new front lawn.  the makeshift fence is making the most of allotment supplies to keep the neighbourhood cats off our finely prepared tilth.

Lawn prepared and sown 30 March

The warmer weather of the past few days has almost got us to bud burst on the crab apple. Fingers crossed that the frosts forecast for next week don’t affect this.

Crab apple blossom appearing

over the past few months we’ve had building work done at home.  the main upside of this is that the extended house has a new kitchen for cooking allotment produce and a utility room to provide an entrance for dirty gardeners bringing their treasure home from the allotment.  At least in theory this means that the main cooking area should stay pretty clean.

The downside of extending the house is that both the front and back gardens have shrunk and as they have been builders’ yards for over six months they are no great advert for our skills.  we have therefore decided that it is time to strip the gardens back and start again and we’ll keep you posted on progress over the next few months.  The back garden used to be a pretty standard small plot. Some lawn, some shrubs and given our interests some fruit and vegetable beds.

Back garden late August 2011

It is now a rather bleaker site and this is after we’ve started clearing the worst of the weeds and have re-trimmed the standard bay.

Back garden January 2019

We’re still working on the re-design, but have decided that there is no longer enough room for a patch of lawn and that the shed will be too much of a pain to move, otherwise all options remain open.

We have made a start on the front garden, which was also a builder’s yard last summer.

Front garden last June

The garden has now been completely cleared and at least the weed suppressant membrane looks neat!  The pots of herbs against the wall give away what will be in a new bed under the kitchen window.  that aside we’re still in the planning phase.

Front garden

Father Christmas brought us a new bird feeding station and with some freezing weather leaving us a bit under-employed in February, we set up a tripod to capture the activity of some of our feathered visitors.

Robins and blue tits are regular visitors to many gardens and ours has been no exception.

Robin

Blue tit

we’ve also enjoyed the delightful sight of goldfinches.

Goldfinches

The robin however, was less pleased to see the goldfinches as these two pictures show.

Incoming

Conflict

Another bird that has been visiting in some numbers is the long-tailed tit.  We tend to get little flocks of them sweeping through the garden, but this one stayed long enough to strike a pose for us.

Long-tailed Tit

We won’t be the only people commenting on how mild the autumn has been so far.  It has been pretty grey and wet, but the temperatures have held up to a remarkable degree.  This has meant that some plants have kept going for much longer than usual like this Dahlia in the back garden.

Dahlia 11 November

It might be nice to have autumn treats like this, but we’ve also got our fingers crossed for some properly cold winter weather to make sure that plants that should go dormant do and that there is some attrition amongst the various pests that take a fancy to our allotment crops.