Garden transformation

A few months ago, Chris and I bought our first house! To put it mildly the house could be described as a fixer-upper, and since we took ownership in October we have been fixing-up like mad. Initially, of course, efforts were focused on the insides of the house, to make it habitable and considerably less ucky looking. We're currently in the middle of having a new kitchen fitted which should drastically reduce the ucky factor of the house.

For my birthday, several of my lovely friends made me a 'garden voucher' which entitled me to an afternoon of work in the garden from them. Given they know how much I want to be growing my own fruit and veg in the garden and to make it a generally pleasant place to be, this was a wonderful present. On Saturday I cashed in my voucher, and I document the resulting garden below!

Here's the garden before the transformation began. "Doesn't look too bad" I hear you say.. well just wait until you see what we found when we dug a bit deeper..
The plan was as follows:- to remove the hedge on the left-hand side to allow for raspberry canes, and gooseberry bushes and other good things; to tidy the end of the garden and make it a composting haven, rather than the composting hell it was at the time; dig over some areas to use as veggie plots to grow yummy food!

Here's the bottom of the garden, where it seems all the random crap was dumped..This is where the new compost bins were to go, but before this could happen the area needed levelling and clearing.
This is where Alan and I began, to the soundtrack of England being completely destroyed by Sri Lanka in the Cricket. What seemed like a simple task soon became otherwise, as we unearthed several large blocks of render that clearly used to be stuck to the side of the house!

As the afternoon progressed and we set Anna to finding the random crap buried in the 'lawn', and Cat started on demolishing the unwanted hedging, we discovered that render was actually one of the more sensible things buried.. Above you can see a badminton racquet found in the grass (with Anna posing, and illustrating  that no, we hadn't just put the grass on top..)  We can also see Cat with some of her discoveries, namely a badminton net, a bed-head and then later on a bicycle!! Hanging in the tree we found several action men.. I guess the previous occupants had something against them? The bottom-right panel is all the stuff that was dug out of the composting area, and you can just about see the shiny new compost bins behind.

Here's Cat looking triumphant with the destroyed hedge, you can see the remains in the background behind her (these will be killed and then the raspberries planted along the fence). You can see that we really did find a bike in there!

And here's the hired muscle, Chris (not the one I bought the house with), who hacked away at the hedging with a pruning saw and helped speed along the destruction..

Here's a picture of how the garden looked when we'd all called it a day.. The hedge was ingeniously and very neatly bundled with twine by Hélio and Chris. Various beds were dug by Janina, Anna, Hélio, Chris and Alan, and Alan planted my rhubarb which has been languishing in a tub for about two years now, waiting for a garden to be planted in. Chris and I were most impressed and happy with the results of an afternoon's labour :)

While the garden transformation took place (and there is more that I haven't documented here, such as the blueberry bushes!) Chris (the one I did buy the house with, and to whom I am soon to be married) was a busy busy bee transporting an inordinate amount of waste to the tip that came from the kitchen destruction. Hopefully I will soon be able to show you the transformation of the kitchen from ugly duckling, into a fully kitted out kitchen, that's actually nice to cook in!

 

And here, for a splash of colour, is a picture of my quince bush, in full bloom! This is one of the few things in the garden that was here before we moved in, and that we really want to keep!