A new garden project

Many of you will know that back in Shinfield Ian and I spent many years landscaping and then planting our back garden. It originally sloped rather unevenly downhill away from the back of the house but hours of back-breaking digging and the shifting of what seemed like tons of earth around the garden levelled out the unevenness and left enough for us to fill a raised bed in the middle. By the time we'd sold our house it was just starting to look like a well-established garden, and quite lovely, although it was becoming apparent that some plants were in the wrong place and would need moving around.

The garden in our new home in Weymouth is a completely different story! On entering the garden it is immediately obvious that gently sloping it is not! The garden rises about six feet over a length of about thirty feet. It had obviously been well-loved in its time, but a year's unattendance has taken its toll.

The large clump of green in front of the hydrangea is mint and there are brambles, nettles and several self-seeded wild buddleias all around the garden and growing in the cracks in the paving.One bonus was the discovery of another batch of self-seeded plants... potatoes! They're delicious and we've been eating them boiled, chipped or roasted with about two out of every three main meals since we arrived and there's probably enough left for a few weeks, yet.

There are agapanthus, clematis, lilies, an as yet unidentified tree (cherry/crab apple/pear/plum), camelias, several more shrubs and much more in the garden, not to mention the large quantities of pots with various shrubs, bulbs and herbs. Much of it is inaccessible at the moment. The top right-hand corner has two overgrown trellises shielding what looks like a compost area, but until someone (thank you, Ian) hacks their way through the undergrowth - and overgrowth - we won't know for sure what's there.

In the top left corner (the garden is rather rhomboid-shaped and the left side is a few feet shorter than the right) there is a little suntrap that catches the evening sun. Like the rest of the garden it's rather overgrown with trails of ivy, brambles and clematis taking possession of the two chairs left behind by the previous owners. But with a little tlc it should be lovely, particularly if we ever get a summer with evenings warm enough to sit outside.

But we're not going to do too much in the garden just yet apart from some pruning. We'll wait until the spring to see what appears. In the meantime, while the weather's still warm, we'll continue to enjoy our lunch on the terrace and watch the dozen or so sparrows that took about half a day, if that, to discover that we'd put out some fatballs and seeds.