A garden story

We moved into our house on October 11th 2013.  We have a shared entrance to our 30' long x 15' wide plot of backyard.  It is overlooked by our tenement block and the tenement block behind us, but that little rectangle of land belongs to us alone to do what we like with it.  Except to make a soap works, a tannery, or to use for steam engines of any kind, according to the title deeds (dated 1890-some such).

So, my mission and my joy.  Design a place which gives us 1) something pleasant to look down on all year round 2) a place to grow food and flowers 3) a safe place for F to play 4) a place to enjoy creation 5) a place to show hospitality (BBQ anyone?) 6) a means to bless our little community and make connections with our neighbors.  In other words: a Garden.

Trying to find a first 'before' picture.  It was basically overgrown grass and a lot of rose bay willow herb!

I spent the two crazy months from October to December (when dark days, Christmas concerts and other obligations make time in the garden scarce) planning out my garden on paper.  Looking at lots of pictures online for ideas and calculating which layout would look nicest, be practical to build and give us the most growing space.  In the end, I opted for a very simple layout, that would let me build it quickly, give good access around the different beds and let the plants do the showing off.

So, my first days of Christmas holiday, I measured off the back half of the garden and dug the sod over to make a 15'x15' square.  This took about 3 days as I only had my hand shovel to do it.  The digging kept me warm.

One square of the garden would be fenced off for vegetables and flowers, the other half would be kept as grass and a place for F to play.

My blue pots and strawberry planters are survivors of our move from Musselburgh two years ago.  I'm glad we kept them.

Up in the attic I noticed a lot of old planks lying in a corner so I dragged them out in the garden to make amazing raised beds.  Simon put up the posts and we threaded three wires (roughly a 1 1/2' apart) up them to make a 'fence' to train apple trees on.

Then, my wonderful husband built me a sweet garden fence.

Fence construction complete.

The raised beds taking shape.  If I had had enough spare soil, I would have just laid it all down on the turned over sod.  But I didn't have any compost to fill up the beds to the right levels.  So, I tried to dig out pathways under the weed-suppressing material and use the earth to fill up the main beds.  It was harder work than I thought and it meant I needed to do a lot of weeding.  It's difficult to get clay even especially when it's wet, so I will have to level out my pathways with sand when we get to that stage.  It also means that I will have to improve the soil over time.

On a different note, here is the front garden when I first planted it with herbs in January.

Fast forward to March - here is the garden with the first of the grids over the main bed.  I am using the square foot gardening approach because I like how it maximizes the output for small spaces.  I'm surprised by how much you can plant within 1'square.  And the grids allow you to have a happy-sort-of-ordered-chaos.

This is later on in March when we put up the central trellis in the main bed.  The little polytunnels were a great find at the pound shop (£5 for 10ft of protection!) because they fit perfectly over 2'square lengths.

Clockwise from top-left: Runner beans and lettuce, sugar snap peas, lettuce and celery, onions, a bunch of thyme, rosemary, lettuce.

In the lower right hand corner here you can see the top of one of two bay trees.  It's a standard trained tree that I was pleased to find 1/2price - great architectural plant that is evergreen and so will make a good anchor-plant for the garden all year long.  Other evergreen perennial plants here are thyme and rosemary.  I like landscaping with herbs (instead of box for example) because they can be manipulated in the same ways by trimming and clipping, but they smell wonderful while working around them and they are useful in the kitchen.  Thyme and rosemary also have the added advantage of flowering in early summer when they are established.

May brings apple blossoms on my Discovery apple tree!

Work in progress....

JUNE means STRAWBERRIES.  The red-gold of the garden.

This border by the garden fence will be my flower-cutting herbaceous perennial bed.  A gardening magazine was giving away 48 tiny baby plants of different herbaceous perennials for the price of the postage (£6.) While I admit I wasn't able to keep all of them alive, I have a good 15-20 of them growing in the space and coming on well.  Considering that each one of them would have cost me between £3 and £5 each in the garden stores as mature plants, I think it's still been worthwhile!  Just takes a bit more patience as they grow.

Google auto-awesome shot of my strawberry poly tunnels.

June growth.  The black box in the left-hand side was built from an old shelf and I earthed up potatoes in it.

The sugar snap peas have hands-down been the easiest and most prolific growers this year.  A healthy snack raw or great in stirfrys.  Also rewarding to pick my own pak choi, though I've had to wrestle them away from the snails.

This is when all the work toting water and food down to the strawberry patch becomes priceless!  First strawberry of the year.

And if that dribble down the chin doesn't make your mouth water, you've never tasted fresh strawberries straight from the garden before!

So, that's my little garden story so far and it puts into context any future photos I decide to upload.  I'm amazed that a 15ft by 15ft piece of ground has been so delightful and productive.  On the grassy-side, we've got a swing, Felicity's house, compost bins, my big blue pots, a laundry drying line and flowering shrubs.  Our kind next-door neighbors don't mind if Felicity uses side-walk chalk on their paving slabs.  We've gotten to chat to almost all of our surrounding neighbors while pottering around in the garden.

Now, if the council would just give me that allotment I have my name down for.....