Shed plans

I need to get these two trees and the holly taken out ASAP so I can order an aviary-style run for the shed beyond. Bunny playspace!! The run will be 10ft long and 5ft wide (and 6ft tall).

Strawberries

Finally we've had rain! It was getting so dry. My adopted strawberry plants (they came with the house!) are looking much happier. Have many pots around the garden of strawberries.

Look! Baby strawberries!

Veggies!

At some point in the near future this will be my little veggie patch. Currently it contains an adopted Rhubarb, Sage and a very sad looking Rosemary, also bluebells and I think those are foxgloves?!

Not sure what to plant in there yet, maybe some beans??

Have already harvested a bit of the Rhubarb and made a darned good crumble, first ever home made crumble too! GROW RHUBARB, GROW! I want more crumble.

Camellia

I didn't know what this shrub was when we moved in. It nearly got chopped. Then it flowered and I was like OH HI. It's being swamped by a conifer (what isn't).

So I've been giving the conifer a cut back to let the poor Camellia get some light.

Would love to know what variety of Camellia it is. It's pretty! Here's to it filling out a bit more round the back. 

Compost Concerns

When we moved in there was a plastic compost bin at the end of the garden that I'd been eyeing up. Finally tackled it today. Bit of a mess. That's a metal shed on the left.

Previous owners considered it a rubbish bin...turns out beer cans and plastic bags don't compost, who knew!

The plastic bin was sitting on a bunch of broken bits of concrete, wood and bricks. So I turned some of that into a tidier bug hotel rather than a heap of junk (that it appears bugs were enjoying anyway). 

And now the whole area looks a bit tidier. Well the right hand side does anyway. The left hand side I'll deal with another day! At least I now have a compost bin I can actually use.

Sharp Objects

Was chopping back this box hedge a few weeks ago. This is not what I expected or wanted to find. Why is it under a hedge?! Why is it next to some wooden crosses?! At least it didn't have blood on it...

CONIFERS ARGH

So I counted all the conifers in the garden, alive and dead, there were 23. TWENTY-DAMN-THREE. The garden is not that big. So we chopped one of them down. One of many to be chopped down.

What you can't see here, is there is a 2ft tall mound of earth and a fallen tree in there. There is no room for skip near my house. *klaxons sound*

Tackling the Shrub Honeysuckle

Why put a shrub honeysuckle here?! Right on the patio? And not keep it tamed? This was the first thing I tackled in the garden, and gained a good 4ft back from the patio too. There is no solid fence between us and the neighbours on the left so keeping some screening is a priority at the moment (as lovely as they are!)

Going....

Going...

Gone!

Significant reason for removal was so we could actually see the back garden from one of the two back doors. It was entirely blocked before. 

Hi!

I started this little blog to chronicle my attempts to tidy up a very overgrown garden in our first home with my husband. I live in a little Victorian terrace house in the exotic town of Luton. We moved in at the end of 2016.

It's the most substantial garden I've ever had to look after and it has basically not been touched (except for some cats and a dog) for 5 years prior to us buying the house. Now it needs chainsaws.

This was it in 2012 (thank you RightMove!)

And when we moved in October 2016 it had turned into this (again, pinched from the RightMove listing):

My goal? A pretty garden with lots of wildlife friendly plants and a veg patch at the end. But most importantly, it needs to be safe for these two monsters to run around. The stars of the home, 11 year old rescue bunnies, Bob and Pat. They will also have their shed with a 10ft x 5ft secure aviary run on the side to safely play in too. So yes, fitting that in! There is a LOT they will chew, yes they will find escape routes, they do not know what's poisonous, so there's work to be done!