Garden Makeover

Hello everyone, how are you doing?  I hope you are all keeping safe and well.

It’s a very picture heavy post today, but I wanted to dash in and show you my garden makeover!

Three weeks ago today, I decided to dig the lawn up.  This what not a decision I made on a whim, I assure you.  I had in fact been pondering over this idea for the past two summers.

Dreaming of a cutting garden…

The lawn was not something that gave me joy, it was meadow grass which always looked a bit scruffy, and was full of weeds and moss.  As you know, I adore flowers, so I started dreaming two years ago about turning it into flower beds.  Romantic, old fashioned cottage garden flowers mixed with my beloved dahlias.  The sort of garden that looked like it was 100 years old.  (See my Pinterest board here, Decorative Garden, for ideas and inspiration for romantic gardens with lots of reclaimed elements.)

My parents discouraged me from this far fetched idea, as quite rightly they pointed out that the children love playing on the lawn.  Or they did, two summers ago!  With one turning 15 in the summer, and my youngest turning 12 tomorrow, a lawn is no longer top of their requirements.  My daughter enjoys sitting outside if it’s warm enough, and I’m lucky if I can get my son out there for more than 5 minutes!

So three weeks ago, I spent a lot of the day out there looking, looking, procrastinating, looking, the cogs in my brain turning and figuring out – could I do this?  On my own?

Embarking on the project…

By late afternoon that day, I had string down marking where I wanted a path to go down the middle of the flower beds, and that evening I started digging the right hand bed out.  It was now or never!  And given the current situation, I was never going to be able to afford to pay a landscaper to come and do it for me.  So I dug out my scruffy gardening jeans, my Doc Marten boots and my sturdy gloves, and embarked on the task at hand.

The plan was to reuse as much of the existing materials as possible, which I managed to do.  The bricks that were edging the lawn got reused as path edging, and the gravel all got reused.  Some existing plants got moved around too.  It was hard work, especially trying to get the bricks out, which were all set into concrete (thank you to my neighbour who loaned me a sledgehammer!).

Progress three weeks on…

Three weeks on and I have done as much as I can, now it’s time to wait for things to spring to life.  I have some dahlia tubers (naturally!), and I have tiny weeny delphiniums, lupins and foxglove on the go.  I’ve got some seeds coming, including poppy and pretty cosmos, which I will sow straight into the ground.  I’ve also got some Ammi majus seedlings, which is very exciting – I haven’t grown plants from seeds for about ten years, so it’s a bit of a learning curve.  Ammi majus is like a delicate frothy cow parsley, which I will plant winding between the other flowers, so create a dreamy sort of haze of green and white.  That’s the idea I have in my head anyway!

I’ll update you when it’s all filled out a bit.  In the meantime, I’m finding the ritual of going outside first thing and last thing in the evening to inspect the plants so lovely – the anticipation is so exciting, as I have no idea how it’s all going to look.  It will probably be a bit of a jumble of plants at first, but we shall see!

Tamsyn x