New Year in my Garden

I spent a lovely day in the garden yesterday. The weather has been so mild, I was working in a t-shirt!!!

I want to get a head start, as the garden will be one of several opening in July for our village open gardens. Having agreed to this I am in a bit of a panic as I am not good at growing to a timetable. I did manage a good display for my hubbies redundancy party which was held at the end of July 2009 this is how it looked on the day.

If it looks like this then I will be very pleased.

I have been scouring the tropical and jungle plant sites which is not a good idea as in my mind I have spent £100's if probably not £1000's. But before we get ahead of ourselves this is what I am dealing with.

We are still toying with raising the veg beds by another sleeper, in the hope that we manage to keep the soil on the bed not in the gravel.

My friends Mark and Gaz have a magnificent 'Jungle Garden' and are busily constructing a 'Koi Pond' if you have a look through this blog post you will see that they have built brick raised beds. Both hubby and I really like this idea and are thinking of doing this on the patio but using sleepers. This would give us a bit more height and hopefully stop the dog jumping on the beds.

Currently the patio area looks like this

The Ensetes are still upright, which is more than they have been for the past couple of years. Lets hope February is kind to us.

Looking up the garden from 'Terminal 1'

To you this probably doesn't look too bad, but to me there is a list of jobs...

Can you see the new extended flue to the left of our dormer? Well the old one had been there for 20+ years and began swinging in the breeze. So we had to get someone in to redo and attach it more securely, doesn't it look awful. I mustn't complain at least we got it done before the bad winds.

this is the worst part of the lawn and took a hammering last year. I can't decide whether to dig it up and re-turf or just re-seed.

This turf I laid at the very end of last year, then it was folded back so the path could be laid, it hasn't recovered so may need to be redone. If you remember this is where one of the old veg beds was.
Below is the other side and where I had the strawberries, looks quite good I think.

The flower bed or should I say the twig and leaf bed. This needs some major work, I will raise the edge of the border and find some new plants, plus grow some bedding plants to fill gaps.

I have finished the compost bins, using up the left over bits of wood, still need to fix a lid, which is currently being used as a shelf in the greenhouse, so I am using carpet and odd bits of wood to protect it.

The bottom patio is now clear of all the wood and debris, but looks a right mess. The fence belongs to our neighbour and is collapsing but they can't see this as they have a huge hedge hiding it. My garden is slightly higher so I am going to get some scaffold boards in and put them along the base of the fence, to protect their fence and keep my soil in!

All the post, bags of compost and wood got stashed here

Apart from ordering sleepers, I need to clear this lot of wood next. This will have to be moved through to our log store.

So day off today to let my back recover, but maybe some online shopping? lol!!!