It’s been just 13 days since we bought this mahoosive 3-bed house and after waiting what felt like FOREVER to move in, I was major pumped to get cracking with work! Being such a big house and needing so much to be done, it’s been challenging trying to decide where to begin! This also needed to be a pretty logical decision – starting a room in the middle of the house, for example, would probably just get trampled and ruined. So whilst we try to figure out a plan, we decided the garden seemed like a good place to begin for now.
The garden as it is right now is a little overgrown and wild, to say the very least and with all this good weather we’ve been having (Hallelujah!), I’ve been itching to get my spades out. After spending a month living at Grant’s parents with their huge grassy garden, I realised how much the dogs loved the big open space and how restricted they were here by all the plants.
So with that in mind, I was certain about having grass in this garden. I always wanted grass in our last house, but it simply wasn’t possible (at least not on a budget!). Unfortunately for the dogs, I still love my plants, so there’s definitely still going to be a colourful flowery border of some sort. And needless to say, a border and grass would just be pretty boring in my books, so I’m working on some ideas to beef-it-up a bit more too.
They say Autumn is when sowing grass is best, so I’ve been getting straight on with this DIY. Here’s the progress so far and the jungle as when we bought the house:
The lady who lived here before actually left a shed-load (literally) of tools and other garden-y bits. How lucky are we?
I’m fairly sure this will be dismantled and gone at some point though…
I don’t know whether those tall plants are weeds or not, but they all had to go (I can’t be dealing with that much maintenance!)
Next, I potted any small plants I thought I’d want to keep, but change location…
There are also tons of these huge rose-bushes dotted around the garden, which I love, but they too will be moved to new spots!
I used one of them as a ‘test-plant’ to move to the back of the garden, into this raised brick bed, next to an existing rose-bush.
So far, not so good. Grants adamant it’s just adjusting… I think it’s dying.
I also removed as much gravel as possible from this centre-piece in the garden. Those concrete slabs are coming out soon too!
And I also the plant next to this big spikey plant (which bloody hurts!)
The rock-bed at the back of the garden is also getting removed, although I discover it’s concreted-bottomed, so more of that to remove too!
And so far, this is how it looks currently, four days in.
There’s still a long way to go and I need to figure out what I’m doing exactly, but so far it resembles much more of a garden than a jungle at least! Clean-up success I say!
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