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Happy Birthday Walnut Kitchen Garden
This week, marks twelve months since I started this garden blog. Is it me or is time going faster! It’s gone by so quickly. I’ve had such an enjoyable time, writing about the garden each week. And as I have done research for a number of the topics, I’ve leaned a great deal too. To celebrate our first anniversary. I’m going to take you back through the original garden transformation series. And show you where we’re up to today. If you’d like to read any of them again, just press on the titles. Part 1 – Let’s get stuck into the garden makeover! In part one, we did nothing but strip…
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The Pizza & Olive Patios
Garden transformation Part 20 – Making a patio There were three seating areas in the garden when we moved here eight years ago. I really approve of lots of different places to sit in your garden, as it gives you a different perspective. It also encourages you to sit and enjoy, which as a gardener is something you sometimes forget to do. First area – The Summer-house The first, was a small area half way down the garden that we are still in the process of turning into a summerhouse. It’s an ideal spot as it gets the sun most of the day, and early evening. Second area – The…
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Creating the Pathways
Garden transformation Part 15 – A long walk. We’ve ended up with 237 feet/72.2 metres of pathways, mainly the consequence of having such a long garden! The raised vegetable beds have also contribute though. It’s certainly good for our step count, especially if you keep forgetting your tools! The vegetable beds were the first part of the garden to be designed, there are six of them and we wanted descent pathways around them. The main priority was to make sure we could comfortably wheel the wheelbarrow around. June 2014 As we both hate mowing grass, we had no intentions of keeping any lawn. Each time we took a little more…
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Greenhouse – Take two
Garden transformation Part 10 – The Greenhouses We’d both longed for a greenhouse for years, we considered building a bespoke one to fit our tiny veg patch, but by then we’d pretty much decided to move. We moved in summer 2013 and set about turning our new garden into a kitchen garden. April 2014 – Greenhouse number one In spring 2014, we ordered our very first greenhouse. This was our joint birthday present that year, and put it together with great excitement. We had planned for the food growing area to be close to the house, so we would be able to clearly see the greenhouse. With this in mind we…
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Creating a walled garden from scratch – The Great Wall
Garden transformation Part 6 – The south facing wall The ‘Great Wall’ is what it’s become jokingly known as. It starts in the front at 3ft high, runs for over 65ft. Then goes up to 6ft high and runs for a further 160ft to the end of the garden. It’s a south facing boundary, so we knew from the moment we moved in that we wanted to grow fruit on it. We both love walled gardens, more than any others and so set about the ambitious task of creating one. With the small exception of our 80ft long holly hedge, which has to stay for the birds and wildlife. When we…
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Creating a walled garden from scratch – The Shady Wall
Garden transformation Part 5 – The north facing wall This is a 30ft long border on the right hand side of the garden, near to the house. It had an existing old fence that the foliage had entwined itself through. As I mentioned previously in Lets get stuck into the garden makeover, we took down and dug out some very large conifers from this area. Hidden behind them we found a small section of lovely old sandstone wall. We also discovered that the old crazy paving patio in the corner was substantially larger than we’d been able to see. We weren’t really surprised that this had been a seating area.…
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Lady bricklayer ?
Garden transformation Part 4 – How I started brick laying When we moved to our first house it had an ancient wall that was leaning at a very precarious angle. It had to come down before it fell down! My husband and I had both been brought up by very practical parents, prepared to get stuck in and have a go. I had been a big Lego fan as a child and really fancied having a go at brick laying. That Christmas my husband bought me a trowel and spirit level, together with a book – no internet then – and we got stuck in. We knocked the old wall…
