Revamping the garden and a new veggie patch

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Regular readers will know I have a constant battle with our garden. Every summer we try to get it sorted in a bid not to have to keep at it every single year but after a few days or a week we think enough is enough and give up.

The problem is we have is the back of the garden is lined with very tall and over grown trees as is the side of the house. We don’t want to pay out to have them cut down as have been quoted around £500-600 to have everything removed and taken away which lets face it is a LOT of money which we don’t usually have spare, and we could do it ourselves if we weren’t too lazy.

This summer I think we have finally cracked it – we have almost cut down all the trees at the back of our garden, it’s taken weeks and weeks as we are filling up our garden waste bin for the council to take away, and this is only emptied weekly so we can only get rid of so much at a time. We could load the car and take to the tip however we don’t want to risk damaging and scratching the car as it’s a lease hire and well we are too last if I’m honest. This is what usually hinders us yearly and because it takes so long we give up. Not this year though, I have just had enough of it always looking half finished.

To combat this we have just cut down the trees, chopped up the branches into bin sized lengths and piled high ready for the bin to be emptied weekly. This is actually working and the pile which was rather high has nearly disappeared now. You could use Round Rock garden and tree professionals to make life even easier.

I was introduced to Engelbert Strauss while doing up our garden as they have a great range of workwear and accessories, shoes and occupational safety clothing, they are a 100% independent family run company, with family members not in their fourth generation. They are not just perfect for working on building sites etc but safety footwear has been needed when chopping down the trees, a lesson learnt the hard way after I trod on spikes from the roses bush wearing flip flops and their personal protection equipment would be handy for the kids when we’ve used the power tools and they can’t bear the noise.

This has given us so much more garden space now, almost another 3ft at the back of the garden, we’ve managed to push the trampoline right back into the corner of the garden – the corner once taken over by trees and this has meant this year we could get out the 8ft paddling pool which has been sitting unloved in the shed since the trampoline arrived as there wasn’t room for both.

Everything is also getting an upgrade or a revamp in the garden now.

The kids swing and slide set which I purchased second hand off a friend has been sold on – it was in need of repair, needed new bolts, sanding and painting – considering they had had it for years it has lasted well so it’s been out with the old and in with the new, the kids now have a new double swing set which is sturdier and not falling apart.

The garden shed which was very old and unloved has had a new lease of life with a complete makeover to make it look like a beach hut. You can find my tutorial on how I did this here.

Another addition to the garden has been a raised vegetable patch for the kids veggies. We had one years ago but the kids kept pulling out the plants so I got rid of it. This was made using an old water tank my friend was getting rid of, she’d had her loft turned into their master bedroom so the water tank had to be moved and downsized.

Upon seeing it on one of my local Facebook selling pages I got Paul to pick it up, he wasn’t initially impressed especially as it was then his job to saw off the top part. He drilled holes in the bottom for drainage and paced it on a wooden crate to aid drainage. It took a LOT of soil and compost to fill this as it is huge, I did buy some clay pebbles to line the bottom and then added over 150L of soil.

The kids had been growing tomatoes in pots (see the shed picture above) which I replanted into the new veggie patch along with rocket, bell peppers and carrots.

The tomatoes and rocket we harvest regularly and have already had a brilliant crop from, the others aren’t ready just yet.

Next up on our to do list for the garden is painting the fences a dark grey colour and we need to cement the swing set into the ground.

A new table and chairs set has meant we spend even more time in our new look garden.

Finally after years of hard work it is looking lovely again – I’ll show you the finished look once we have painted the fences and put some grass seed down.

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