Makeover the garden

I’ve finished the patio, completed the terrace for and put up the greenhouse. Also put in a second pond for the frogs and other little critters to live unmolested by goldfish. That also required a new retaining wall down the side of the garden. Still a few things to do, like a new shed but it’s coming along.

I’ll finish the patio and top wall.

Photos to follow but I’ve started laying the patio and finished the foundation of the wavy wall. A slow job and the weather hasn’t been great but it’s getting there.

Rather than keep them in pots any longer I planted out the climbing rose and clematis. Dug a big hole, filled it with compost, built an edge with rubble to run the patio up onto and there they are.

The grass is coming along nicely, and now doesn’t have the doom of chickens hanging over it.

Despite all the rain I’ve managed to get on a bit with the curved retaining wall.

At the bottom of the bank the old retaining wall was falling apart so I’ve started ripping it down and rebuilding. Instead of going straight across I’m making it wavy to tie in with the dry stone walls above and a general curvy theme planned for the patio.

A couple of previous photos show the bank at the top of the garden all covered in ivy and weeds. I’ve now cleared the top two levels and planted them up with a variety of white flowering plants. My little girl says they’re boring, being white rather than pink or purple, but I think they’ll look nice, a sort of moon garden, all white and with night sented flowers where I can manage it.

Part of the ‘top patio’ area is initially going to be grass and wild flowers, with my plan being to build a quarter circle pegola which will then be clad in chicken wire as a run for pet chickens. Anyway, for now the edge of the area has been defined with old black floor tiles. The mesh is just there to keep the local cats off until the grass is established.

Two paths ended with this little gap so I was always using the bit of flower bed as a short cut. Well, that was just silly so I put in some steps. The wall there on the right needs the top fixing and building up so that the end of the wood chip path can run up to that rather than the wooden support in place now.