I’ve been thinking about how best to show you our new back garden. Because of the layout, it’s a difficult one to show – it’s been created with many different areas which lead one onto another – so I’ve taken a mixture of standard and panoramic photos along with a typed walk-through in the hopes that it conveys the journey a bit better than my usual snaps. Brace yourself for a lot of photos!

Straight out of the back door, we have a gravelled area (the gravel needs some TLC though!). We’ve popped our metal table and chairs from the old house out here, and the previous owner kindly left us their bird table. There’s also some kind of cattery duplex which we’re keeping logs in at the moment.

There’s a small brick shed which I think used to be an outhouse (now home to our lawnmower), and plum and pear trees to the right.

Beyond that, there’s a gate to the grass, where there are some flowerbeds which I have no clue about – there are some trees there too. Scarlett’s trampoline (surrounded by a herb garden) and Wendy house (“Honeysuckle Cottage”) are to the right, and to the left, there’s a bowl-like dip in the ground surrounded by lavender, with a sign saying “Sleepy Hollow” – this is designed to put cushions in and have a lie in.

There’s then a garden swing to the right, which is covered in some kind of climbing plant. Again, no clue what it is!

There’s a fish pond to the left, which had beautiful water lilies and 41 fish in it… I know, because we’ve already drained it and my uncle is now the proud owner of 41 fish.  Sadly, it’s just not worth the risk of us having a large, deep water feature in the garden when we’ve got young children, so we’re getting rid of both ponds.

There’s then a rose/rope feature which leads to the next section of the garden…

A purple slate path leads through this section. Gooseberry and redcurrant bushes live just beyond the roses to the right.  Railway sleepers form vegetable patches, where artichokes and chives are growing, and Barry and Scarlett have already sowed seeds for beetroot, onions, kale, peas and two types of carrot, which should be plentiful because the seed packet split.

To the left, rhubarb is growing (finally, one I can identify!), then more plants and flowers and another pond, which was deceptively deep, so that’s now drained too – I think we’ll just get more slate to cover that area.

A large potting shed lies just beyond the pond – maybe one day we’ll make great use of this, but it’s pretty much empty at the moment.  The floor of the greenhouse (which is to the right of the potting shed) is clear, but up above, they’ve left us grapes growing, which have made great progress over the last couple of weeks.

Beyond the greenhouse is a woody no mans land, where a few flowers are growing, and then there’s a fenced area where raspberries have the run of the place.

To the left of here (I’m nearly done!) is a huge log store – one of the previous owners was an arborist (tree surgeon to you and me), and they have a good stock of logs built up.  Barry’s already planning on bringing one section of the log store up so it’s nearer the house, as it’ll be a bit of a trek to get logs when the weather’s rubbish.

The summerhouse at the bottom of the garden is surrounded by a path of wooden cable drum ends, and this will be Barry’s office when he’s working from home.  It’s spacious, has its own log burner and a lovely view of the church grounds next door.  I’m not at all jealous.  Not me.  No way.

Then, walking back up towards the house on the right hand side, there’s a garden seat around a tree of indeterminate genus, and a gate to the church next door.  You know, in case going round the front is too much of an inconvenience.

There are some nice little touches as you walk through the garden – there’s a hedgehog house and an insect hotel, which I’m sure will thrill Scarlett if we actually find residents!

We’ve got quite a few plans for the garden, like getting rid of the two pond areas and a couple of the flowerbeds, creating more of a grassy area for the kids to use.  We both have a few gardening books on the go, but a newborn baby means I’ve parked my reading list for now, so I can’t say I know anything about when to plant veggies yet!