The rear garden was kept in immaculate condition before we lived here but we can't keep up with the maintenance.
This Project is Still Ongoing
Finishing off the garden will be one of the last jobs, but I am doing bits to it in the warmer months.
What Do I Need to do?
A fair bit!
The DIY tasks ahead of me are:
- Complete redesign of the garden, key alterations include:
- Massively reducing the flower beds (the 2 story rear extension should obliterate lots of plants!).
- New decking at the far end.
- Create a stream from the pump outlet to the existing pond.
- Keep all the trees, I like them.
- New lawn
- New path running the length of the garden
Estimates
Just for a bit of fun, I have a go at estimating the cost & time
I have a budget for this, as a rough estimate I reckon I could do it all for no more than £7000. This is mainly due to the fact that I don't want to add any more plants or trees, it's got loads already!
On the timings, it's hard to say because I'll be on and off it over the next few years. Probably getting on 100 days in total.
And finally, I also estimate that it would cost me an extra £15,000 if I paid other tradesmen to carry out the work.
Daily log
A brief log of my battles with the tasks! with a few pictures chucked in...
Bringing you up to speed
I started this website about 1.5 years after purchasing this property. This is what I did in the garden up to creating this site:
Late 2016
The rear boundary fence. Soon after moving in, we discovered that the rear fence had been erected about 5ft in from the boundary line. Apparently, this was so that the previous owner could chuck his lawn cuttings over the fence and not worry about it landing on someone else's land!
The full cost of the fence is in the December 2018 Spending Report.
May 2018
Back onto the garden as things warm up and I build a pretty sturdy high bar for my daughter and her Gymnastic practice.
After which, I extended the oak fencing to wrap around one of the far corners of my garden:
This was ahead of installing my decking.
Summer 2018
The decking took me all summer 2018 to produce (I still have a few boards to fix in place and it's November). I decided to curve all the edges and install two lots of steps, with it all wrapping around a large shrub. You can find out the full cost of the decking in my Summer Spending Report.
25.11.2018
Yep, not finished the decking yet, weekends have been pretty full up with other stuff. Anyway, I got a few hours in today and got some boards down.
You can spot the difference between the old and new boards. The darker coloured planks are the old ones that have lost some of their colour over time. Eventually, the new ones will lose their colour too and it'll all look more uniform. I love the colour, but I'd rather have a maintenance-free garden, so I'm happy to let the wood silver up in time.
December 2018
That's it, the decking is finally finished, shame it's too cold to eat Christmas lunch on it! Here's some epics of the finished article (got some shrubs to place around it yet)
