Out the other side

and officially in my garden era!

We officially moved into our new house nearly 3 weeks ago now, and it has been an exciting and exhausting time in equal measure! I’m so incredibly delighted to be finally in my garden era, as the kids say. I’ve been dreaming of having a garden since…really as long as I can remember. Between the practicalities of student life, vet school, and focusing on the start of my career, plus our choice of flats in Edinburgh, I’ve never had a private garden that was wholly mine. I’ve been lucky enough to have the most beautiful communal garden in my last flat, and access to a friend’s allotment, plus my Gran’s garden, but it’s nowhere close to the feeling of having my own space to tend.

We have an amazing garden in this new house. It’s split in two, with the front garden being more naturalistic, lots of trees and shrubs, and a back garden that was an enormous veg bed when we first moved in. I felt bad undoing George’s (the previous owner) hard work with the veg bed, but we need a dog-proof area the dogs can use so we instantly set-to levelling and preparing the ground for turf. I filmed multiple time-lapses of this process, if you’re interested, they’re on my Instagram. The front garden, whilst beautiful, is not at all dog-proof, there’s no fencing so the dogs could get out onto the road. The back garden however is pretty well enclosed, so it was goodbye veg bed and hello turf.

Day one, before any boxes were unpacked, I hung a bird feeder. Sadly the birds have yet to frequent it, I’m wondering if it’s too arty for them and they don’t recognise it as a bird feeder? It’s quite a minimalist design, it’s not a standard bird feeder style. Maybe my birds are dummydumdums?

To make way for the turf in the back garden, we had to lift all the gravel, remove all the borders, shift two compost bins and multiple slaps, bits of rotten wood and black plastic weed membrane. George loved him some black plastic weed membrane, that stuff is EVERYWHERE.

There were several plants I wanted to move before the turf went down. A giant rosemary, an enormous sage, 2 red currents, and a rose. I also salvaged as many strawberries as I could, he had an epic strawberry patch. I could only save around a third of them, there wasn’t time to lift any more, since we were on a deadline with the turf delivery. We’re running out of frost-free days to give the turf time to establish roots before it becomes too cold for it to survive, so we needed to get it in as soon as possible. We moved in on a Tuesday and prepared the ground over the next 4-5 days, alongside clearing a storage unit, clearing my in-laws, and the numerous other tasks that accompany moving house. The turf was delivered the following Tuesday and Andrew and I laid it together over 48hrs. It was so exhausting, I’m not gonna lie. I worked 2 night shifts in the middle of all this, so I was a barely functioning shell of a person by the time it was done. Still, we did it, with the help of my in-laws, a friend of the family to rotavate the ground, and sheer bloody mindedness.

The view from my new garage, prior to the turf going in. I have a greenhouse and a garage now, my cup overfloweth. The space in front of the greenhouse is currently a giant rhubarb patch, with at least 6 different rhubarb plants. I’m planning on putting raised beds in this area, to keep the dogs from running through my vegetables, so the rhubarb will need to be moved in time. Still, there’s no rush. I’m working through an endless to do list of tasks, so I’ll get to the raised beds in time. I would like to plant garlic and onions though, so maybe I need to get moving on building the beds…

Today I spent an enjoyable hour or so, planting some spring bulbs. I planted a mix of narcissi, muscari, snowdrops, miniature iris, alliums, and have anemones soaking overnight to go in tomorrow. I also installed a washing line, and removed an old shrub blocking the path to the greenhouse. A very satisfying day of pottering, I’m living my best grandad life right now and I couldn’t be more thankful.