April
June
This is a fairly instant garden, as gardening goes. We started with a bare patch of land with a lot of rubble, some paving slabs, and all sorts of junk, from a statue of a dragon to an old fireplace The very first thing I did was buy a compost bin, I think the compost bin is the heart of the garden, If you have great compost, you will have a great garden . We dug out the lawn and cleared it of all the old building material - bricks, door handles - the usual, it's a bit like archeology I always think, wondering what on earth the builders were thinking when they tossed lightbulbs and crisp packets down and covered it with an inch of soil. We removed as many of the perennial weeds as we could, like bindweed. Then we seeded the lawn and choose lots of fast growing vegetables like courgettes and runner beans to make a garden as quickly as possible. The garden has changed a lot since these photos but having annuals and veggies for that first year gave us time to think and plan our shrubs and permanent planting while still having a garden to enjoy that summer.
