Nine months in the making

It has been 9 and a half months since we moved into our new home in Bromley in Kent. Not sure where I heard it said but as the saying goes, "Kent, the garden of England". Except it  didn't really feel like a garden where we lived. We bought a new build and while the developers have turned an abandoned stadium into a well turned out housing development called Trinity Village and have planted it with trees and shrubs, somehow our little back garden only seemed blessed with some lawn and an unremarkable crab apple tree, wholly disproportionate in height to the size of our tiny garden.  Not quite picture perfect, not quite paradise.

It is south facing so we have an abundance of light flooding the garden. Summer last year was glorious. It felt as though we were in a southern Europe. Small and rather unremarkable garden it may be so we decided to turn it into a courtyard garden. I have always loved potted gardens and have always felt that you can get so much more out of potted gardens than sticking to planted borders. However, it felt a waste to just pave the back garden; what joy would those slabs bring even with pots, if the ground remained unacknowledged?

Our last place, a Victorian 2 bedroom flat in Sydenham had a terrible back garden. It was North East facing overhung by huge trees from the estate next door and flanked by a garden that had long been abandoned by the tenant.  We hated using that garden and months would go by without us ever stepping into that desperate place. The front garden was better but of course, you don't relax in a front garden in full view of the road and your neighbours.

This is what we managed to do with the front garden in Sydenham....

It was lush and colourful but pleasure in the garden was limited to those moments when leaving the house or returning to the house. It just wasn't the right space for us. We weren't able to sit and relax in this garden, we weren't able to use it to entertain friends and because of its location we really couldn't grow any fruits or vegetables either (Even if they had managed to grow, the squirrels would have made short work of them).

So planning then... what were we going to do and how would it take effect? We decided not to do anything with the garden when we first moved in. we had to prioritise getting the house sorted understanding the home that we lived in and how we felt in the space.  In planning the new garden we knew we wanted a space that would work as an entertainment area and as a garden both for flowers and fragrance as well as producing some our fruit and veg.....