February, 2017

I started writing about my garden with great enthusiasm and good intentions... then the end of January turned into tax return frenzy! Its now foggy freezing February and the last thing I want to do is work outside in the cold. Time for planning then, or finding the plan I drew up of the existing plot and making a sketch of what I'd like to change...

sketch plan of the garden and house

When we moved, I had all good intentions of properly organising the house and not ending up with piles of 'stuff' again. Filing? Well, that leopard hasn't changed its spots...
We have been getting plans drawn up for an extension so that part of the garden will in fact disappear, but it wasn't an area I've been digging – it's another concrete corner of the garden!
I have had a lingering cold, which isn't helping, and I've found a sketch (not the one I was looking for) which shows the garden as it was when we moved in (prior to the chestnut being felled!)

The garden is a similar length to the one we had in our last house but it's three times the width.
That means we have quite a lot of ideas, but equally means we have discarded a few.
I had an allotment in St Albans and it was one that the previous gardener had planted an amazing strawberry plot. I'd love to recreate that. Ideally, I've been thinking about having some raised beds so that I can grow some vegetables. The things that grew well in the allotment were strawberries, artichokes and squash. It'll be interesting to see what grows well here...

The house I grew up in

We laughed at having four sheds but they are in various states of decrepitude and don't really have enough space to store much inside. We have put a replacement shed/home office on our wish list, but it will be some way off, and in a perverse logic, it will likely be occupying the herb garden.
Most gardeners will say that a garden takes as many years to design as you live in a house – my last house's garden also changed widely over 14 years, and it was only when I went home to  my parents' in Scotland, that I realised I'd planted some of the same plants into the garden as I'd grown up with. Maybe this is my plan for the next fourteen years. If my gardening will help my MS stay relatively stable by keeping me calm and meditative, its a winner in my book.

When we found the gnome he was pale and uninteresting!