Back in July, I wrote about the front garden looking a bit overgrown.  This photo of Barry and Scarlett picking rosehips is from September, and as you can see, they should really have taken food and water, and maybe one of those survival bracelets with them to battle their way out again.

There are some lovely plants in the front, no doubt about it; delphiniums was probably my favourite surprise as the flowers appeared over the summer. But again, like some of the features that didn’t make the cut in the back garden, there are metaphors about coats and cloth here, and we’re not landscape gardeners, we both work, and we’ve got two kids.

Plus, it’s been a bit of an eyesore over the winter and the drive desperately needs redoing.  This is what the front garden looks like from Jude’s room.  Hope you appreciate this photo; I may or may not have put my phone in mortal danger trying to take this through the inch gap of a safety locked window.

Barry’s definitely taken both gardens on as his domain so far, and this is his draft at redrawing the layout of the current front garden.  It drastically reduces the amount of plants in there but keeps a strip down the left hand side, gives us some lawn at the front with a path and there’s a clear boundary between our property and the public footpath – we’re thinking white picket fencing (yes, really!).

It also cuts the drive wider.  At the moment, the drive is straight up.  We’d like to curve it around the existing tree to give us a bit more parking space.  However, there’s kerbing on either side seemingly cemented into the core of the earth, plus the cement foundations of an old wall at the front which we need to somehow get rid of first, so I think heavy machinery would be required for those.

We’ve had a few quotes from garden companies to fulfil the job as laid out by Barry – so no design, just labour and materials – but it was heftier than we thought, so it’s looking like this is a job for summer ’17 and Barry will be getting a tan (as much as his pale Northern Irish skin is able).