It’s a year or so now since Ryan and I looked at the garden and decided it wasn’t really working for us. We were standing in what we called the Sunset Strip, a weird additional patch of garden that faces west. It was fenced off from the main garden and could only be reached from the road. When we moved it in was filled with ‘low maintenance’ shrubs that had got out of hand. Since then I have used it as an allotment, with small raised beds for crops such as potatoes that mostly take care of themselves. They had to – it’s difficult to get water to them, and I actively dislike gardening in full view of people walking past.
Our neighbours had just had their garden fence replaced with a posh new one with concrete fence posts. Their reason for doing so was that their fence had been damaged more than once by careless drivers. Ryan thought it would be a good idea to do the same for our fence, because concrete posts and gravel boards are much more durable. We realised we could bring the Sunset Strip into the main garden, and I graciously offered to give it up as gardening space so that Ryan could build himself a workshop.
For me it means losing 4 small raised beds in an area I found hard to keep under control. It also means losing lavender shed, which we will replace with a combination greenhouse/shed in due course. And it means losing my two ‘dalek’ style plastic compost bins, which I do miss. The new plan is to replace them with rodent-proof compost tumblers, so that I can have them closer to the house. That will take some time, too.
(There’s a tiny section of the Strip left outside the fence, because it’s home to a gas main for which we have to leave access, and we need to clear that out and drop some paving slabs down, and then
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