Showing posts with label family gardens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family gardens. Show all posts

Tuesday, 3 February 2009

The Good Thing About Snow......

 The hated front garden. I do feel brave, showing you this!

There are many benefits to the snow. Mostly, it has to be said, if you are a child. I can honestly say it doesn't hold that much appeal for me. I try. We went for a snowy walk, the children made a snowman and a couple engaged in a snowball fight involving lots of children.

The view greeting me out of our front door

One thing I am grateful to the snow for is how it hides all my garden's imperfections. Which means, it covers it completely because we all know my garden has many faults (all of them laid squarely at my door).

One of the boring borders

So I'm enjoying the look of my patch while I can. I'm wearing my snow goggles. Then the thaw will start and it'll be back to reality....

Saturday, 12 July 2008

It's All Change In the Carrots Garden



I'm really indecisive. The subject of how many times the kitchen and Aga have been moved gets brought up far too often if you ask me.

Unfortunately, I'm just the same with the outside. We are Not Happy with our garden. Basically, it's not big enough (and neither is the house) but it's all we're ever likely to have so we, I, need a way to come to terms with it and lurve it.

Gardening books, mags, programmes and shows have been scrutinised, nay obsessed over, in a bid to find Ideas. But some changes are happening and some have been thrust upon us. And all without a plan being agreed.

Take, for instance, the shed at the bottom of the garden. All forlorn, unloved and leaking it stood, forgotten. Until Hubby decided he needed it for His Stuff. So it's been spruced up, made water-tight (funny how that happens when he needs it) and moved.

Actually, I quite like its new home, near the house, at the top of the garden. I'm thinking a lick of paint, something lovely growing up the sides, room inside perhaps for a fork or two. He's thinking Hands Off!


The bottom of the garden, also neglected, is now crying out for attention. "Do something with me before the neighbours complain" it shouts at me every time I look out the window. Sometimes it cries "Look at all this wasted space. Space! Wasted! How could you, ye of such small home crammed with lots of kids!"

But for once I know what to do. The climbing frame is earmarked for where the chicken pen is, nicely hidden by the willow tree. Next to it will be the hammock strung between two more trees. And that space opposite, recently vacated by Small Shed will be home to my Potting Shed! Hurrah! I did voice concern that my shed was a little too close to the Children's Corner to be anything remotely retreat-like but Hubby, with his shed no where near the children, assured me it would be fine.

We, of course, have done nothing yet. There's the rubble waiting to be used as a base. And the overgrown jungle hill has been flattened and is waiting for....well, not sure really. What we really need is a remote control to freeze frame the children for, um, two months to give us a chance to catch up with everything. Either that or a nanny. Alas we have neither so this weekend we will be cracking on.

And the motivation? The chicken pen has now been vacated, thanks to Mr Fox, who rather ironically made good use of the space made by Hubby's shed removal to spy the chickens and make off with them. We've had hens for years and never had any trouble.


I shall miss the Bossy one, who kept laying in my herb bed. Really I feel quite sad about them both. And the partridge eggs Broody (who was always broody) was incubating. Still, I'm trying to look on the bright side, in an irritating Pollyanna-ish way, because I guess it means the garden plans might, finally, come to fruition. If I don't change my mind.

Tuesday, 17 June 2008

A Fairy In My Garden


This was undoubtedly the most beautiful sight in my garden today. I'm not really into flowers, but that will hopefully change, one thing at a time, so there are no blooms. But there was this. A fairy in my garden. I know she was a fairy because she told me so. Watering, of her own free will, a pot of salad. Ah, to be three-years-old.
Ahhhhhh, to being the mother of a three-year-old.

Thursday, 1 May 2008

Real Family Gardens


Apart from spending a lot of yesterday with my nose pressed up against the window I spent a lot of time with my nose pressed in books. Gardening books, naturally.

I'm looking for inspiration. I am sorely lacking it when it comes to ideas on creating our dream family garden, for some reason. Actually, I probably know the reason. Our garden, like the rest of our house, has to accommodate a lot of people with a lot of different needs in not a lot of space with not spending a lot of money.





I have been looking at some books to help me, some of which I have had for years although, to look at my garden, you'd never guess.

So piled up on the garden table is Bunny Guinness' Family Gardens, Sharon Lovejoy's Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots, Great Gardens For Kids by Clare Matthews and my latest acquisition Small Family Gardens by Caroline Tilston, which I thought would be perfect.

Except, none of them are perfect. They are all wonderful, with lots of ideas and photos and yet they don't seem to feature real family gardens and by real I mean gardens with washing lines. Dogs who dig and poo. Chickens who decimate your lawn. Climbing frames made of metal and blue plastic. Unsightly compost bins. Of course their gardens may all have this, just tucked away in their second acre.


What I really, really want is a book about how to make your family garden suit everyone and look great without winning the lottery or relocating to something sporting an acre or two. And I want to see washing lines featured. Prominently. Is it too much to ask?