The story so far…

These are pictures to show what we’ve been up to so far:

Come into the garden (the biggest room in the house!)

This is what we had to start with…

Lots and lots of weeds, dead plants and absolute rubbish EVERYWHERE we even dug a whole bath out of the end of the garden!

So with a lot of digging, rubbish removal and hard work it started to resemble a garden:

This is where our first 2 major projects started… putting in a pond and a patio!

Stephen and I have become connoisseurs of finding gems for free…
we have 3 favourite places to go for this:
1) Our local re-cycle center has re-use cabin where people can leave things for others to have. We have become addicted with this place and have picked up things from antique typewriters, lots of art to huge plants and recently a beautiful white parasol in amazingly good condition. It’s been a saving grace so many times and seems to have a knack of having exactly what we need every now and again which normally starts a curious discussion on whether our guardian angels may be dropping off stuff for us to use!

2) Freecycle is amaaaazing in every way – we started by getting rid of a lot of stuff we no longer needed on there and met such lovely people who came to our house to collect them – often with presents which was a welcome bonus! We would offer something like a working printer or floor light and get home grown lettuce and a very happy person in return – it’s beautiful and every thing I love about people. Soon we started picking up things too and would give our albums as thankyous. Most of our garden has come from freecycle and we are truly thankful for it all.

3) Gumtree has also been very useful. The freebies section can be pretty exciting or the items for sale are normally cheap too. The reason why it is on my list of my 3 favourite places to find free gems is because we got our dog, Hobbes from there for free… more on that soon.

So back to the garden… THE POND.
After digging out the bath at the end of garden and taking it to the tip we were driving back when we spotted another bath on the side of the road, by a house tip… now this bath was different it was big and shapely and handsome… Stephen and I decided it would make a great pond, threw it into the van, went back home and googled “how to put in a pond” this is what we did:

“First find a bath by the side of the road and dig a huge deep hole for it to sit in”

“Then consult the gardening god for tips…” (ok it’s Alan Titchmarsh not quite god!)

“Next lay down pond liner over bath”

We luckily got a free pond liner and pump from good ole gumtree days after finding the bath (see why I think my guardian angel is helping out here)

“Next fill with water… make sure to hold down the sides on the pond liner with heavy stones”

“Whilst the pond liner fills with water push into neat folds”

“Surround with pebbles and boulders” (don’t you love our fountain?!)

We then went to a shop and spent actual money on some beautiful pond plants including my favourite flower- a water lily.

1 POND?… tick!

Next up was the patio… this was a little more expensive.
We knew we wanted a patio area right from the moment we first saw our garden so when a load of paving slabs went up on freecycle I jumped at the chance and the next day myself, Stephen and a friend went to collect 20 paving stones – and boy were they HEAVY! We also got a load of beautiful stone bricks from another freecycler a while later.
After a lot of research we realised we need to visit B&Q for the next round… we picked up a lot of sharp sand (we had to keep going back for more), a couple of bags of concrete, some weeding fabric and a meter spirit level which set us back about £50 but really that is super cheap for a whole patio so I really can’t complain!

Then the digging began… my arms and back ached for days after. We spent a whole day digging down about 3 feet and then evened out the whole patch for the patio to be laid. We then poured down the sharp sand (about 3cm thick throughout) raked and evened the lot.

Stephen standing on the soon to be patio!

I did about 3 trips for more sharp sand- get more than you need. I think we used about 15 bags in the end.

Nearly finished!

We used the bricks to line the patio with and also built in a higher layer bit at the end… I would say this was the idea at the beginning but it was by accident as our levelling out hadn’t really gone to plan and the end was much higher than the rest… “The best art comes from accidents” …

VOILA! Also got these lovely pots on freecycle that day and the picnic table was a cheap gumtree buy.

2 PATIO?… tick!

We felt very proud that day and do everytime we take on a project and see it through to the end.
There’s lots still to catch up on but all in good time my dear, all in good time.

I must sleep and rest my back as I spent the whole day digging bricks out of the back of the garden today and it’s all a bit ouch!

I want to leave you with a picture of beautiful inspiration as I will do everytime:

Take care me lovelies…
Gabby xox