Peter's Blog

Garden Facelift

Wow, my first real weekend gardening! I took ukslim’s advice and dug to just over a foot, removing the debris and rubble before turning in some compost. Most of me aches after 3 days of digging, lugging stuff around, re-digging and digging again, but I can safely say I loved it; so much so that I was a little lost when Monday’s rain got too heavy to be outside.


After clearing the rocks and bricks I decided to treat this patch as a bit of an experiment, I wasn’t sure whether to plant veg or decorative plants, and I didn’t know which decorative plants I wanted anyway. As my first project I’ve created 3 small sections and will wait to see whether growing vegetables or decorative plants provides me with the most satisfaction. I have a herb garden nearest the house, a small patch for vegetables in the middle, and at the far end an area for decorative plants. I’m aware that I’m a bit late starting this year but we’ll see how the veg have grown come harvest.


I chose not to go with conifers in the end as to get what I wanted would have been quite expensive, and being a rented property I didn’t want to spend lots on something I would likely leave behind. The herbs, veg and heathers were all less than £2 each (except the tomatoes which I had already) and the four shrubs were £5 each. I’ve tried to give the plants enough space to grow and found deciding where to put everything quite difficult to start with. Eventually I came to the conclusion that if it wasn’t right I could move things round later. It was much more relaxing after I accepted it didn’t have to be perfect the first time and I’m pleased with the way the garden looks now, even if it’s an unconventional mix.

Since I was changing the garden quite a bit, I decided to make a little video of my progress which we could use to spread the word about Grows on You. Hardly Hichcock in its camera work but fun to make.

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