How to renovate your garden

We’ve been working hard to renovate the inside of our house over the last year. That had to be our focus, given how bad it was inside. After a big year of work, we’re in a position where we can spend more time turning our atrocious garden into something beautiful and useful. It’s a slow journey, given how much work needs to happen, but we’ve made some progress and learned a few things along the way.

What we started with

Here’s what we started with. So dire. There were weeds everywhere and they are so invasive I’m still digging them out every week or so. There is awful red gravel everywhere, which gets into the house and onto everything. All the hedging is overgrown to a ridiculous extend and the lawn was patchy and weed-filled. Aside from some violets and a solitary hellebore, there were no flowers.

Some of these photos are from the real estate listing, where you can see the old veranda. This had to be pulled down as it was rotting away. It was so unstable! One end was literally being held up by a huge, overgrown creeper, where the rats lived when they weren’t running around in our ceiling and walls. The last image shows us starting to build the first garden bed. That grass tussock took us over a week to get out.

The garden mood board

These are the images that I find inspiring and give an indication of the mood we want for the garden. Gardening is very different to interior design, as it’s a living thing. You might have a vision, but you also have to think about whether the plant you have in mind will actually thrive in the place you want it. Then there’s seasonal changes: will there be something growing each season, or will your garden be a riot in spring and summer but completely empty in autumn and winter?

Where we are now

We broke the garden into several sections, so we could tackle one at a time. Our front garden is actually ok, so we haven’t attacked that yet. All we’ve done in the front is give the lawn a lot of weed’n’feed, water and mowing. We cut back some overgrown bushes and took down two old pine trees but that’s about it. I have big hopes for that front garden. It’s going to be a mass of flowers one day. Get ready for some epic cottage curb appeal, people! But that’s for another day.

Please ignore our giant pile of cuttings and junk in the background. We’re trying to keep working through the pruning, but having only a small bin to fill makes it a slow process.

For now, we’ve focused on turning one patch of gravel and weed into a beautiful garden full of flowers. A wonderful lady from our church (who lives down the road from me) has gifted me several plants, which are now giving me so much joy in our little plot. I’ve also joined The Diggers Club, and am loving getting more plants from them. We’ve got room in here for our peach tree and a rose, which we will add in the winter.