Hello and my garden story
Dew_drops_in_the_hostas
Posts: 295
Hi there,
I'm new to gardening, having only taken it up a couple of years ago. I thought I would introduce myself to the forum, as it is my first time using it.
My husband and I have been in our home for about 8 years, but due to illness/work we didn't really do anything with our back garden until about 2 years ago.
It seemed turning 30 awakened something in me, and 'Operation Garden' inspired me to try my hand at gardening, and so I cleared out all the overgrown shrubs that didn't inspire me any more, and dug a new flower bed in.
I quickly fell in love with Hostas and ferns for the shady bed, and love how they look at this time of year. The back flower bed gets full sun almost all day long, so I have a nice mix of shady and sunny spots. Now I'm looking for ways to keep my garden looking interesting all year, and have planted up a few hellebores my mother in law gave me a couple of weeks ago.
Thanks for reading through this, and here are a few pictures of the garden- before, during and after!
The first day- it started with my husband deciding to re-felt the shed, then we though we should paint the shed....B&Q had the paint on offer, so we decided to paint the fences too. Somehow it turned into a mammoth month long operation!
I started on clearing out the flower bed, and accidentally painted large parts of our lawn 
Husband moved the red robins.
After a lot of hard work I ended up uncovering some lovely ferns, and a hydrangea that looked a bit sorry for itself. I started to plant up some hostas.
After finishing the flower bed we decided our next challenge would be a decking area.
So my clever husband built this! We thought our work was done, but I decided the area to the right of it looked a bit odd, and set about creating a new flower bed.
Last year it got minimal work as I had two large hip surgeries, but it gave a lot of the plants a good chance to grow and mature a bit.
So, this is what it looks like so far this year:
I did remove the Stachys today, it was looking straggly and didn't seem to be in the right place, so I have a space in the border now.
And taken after a heavy rain shower today:
Husband is still working on getting rid of moss from the lawn, hence the black patches.
Posts
Hi DDITH and welcome to the forum. Thank you so much for sharing your lovely garden with us. I loved reading the story as to its development - though I did think at one stage you were going to say you painted your OH rather than the grass! Its a real credit to you and your OH. Thanks again.
Thanks! Neither of us is really 'green-fingered', my husband hasn't got any interest in the flower beds/plants but is now desperate for a green (and moss free lawn). I'm just really enjoying trying things out and seeing what works. I've planted up sweet-peas, snap dragons, French and African Marigolds, geraniums, nemesia, fuchsias and so on in the last few weeks. They were nearly all plugs, so quite a while to wait for lots of colour, but I'm quite excited to see what it all looks like when they do bloom!
Thank you - what a lovely garden that will continue to develop and grow over the years and no doubt give you both a lot of joy.
Love the colour on garden fence - what is it? Feel the need to get the paint brush out !
P.S. Love Hostas too - plan for next year is to split mine that are in pots and put one half in the boarder
Ah ha. You've got the bug! For me gardening is the most stress relieving, thought provoking, and enjoyable of pastimes. I garden for wildlife so my garden would not suit everyone. There's no straight line to be seen anywhere and I cannot abide bare soil so everything gets crammed in. I do not do lawns as I remember my lecturer telling me the the most difficult and time consuming aspect of gardening was having the perfect lawn (good luck to your hubby on that one!). Gardening is fantastic!
Thanks! I think it was Cuprinol Garden Shades in Seagrass :-) It was hard work! We ended up taking the fence panels out, putting them on tarp and using a pressure spray in the end.....saved having one very achey arm!
What a fantastic transformation! That grass should be very scared as it's probably going to shrink as you reclaim more space for plants in future years ?
Hello dew-drops and welcome to the forum
I love blues and purples too, thanks for sharing your garden story.
hi & welcome, great photo story & it's looking lovely already, did you do just one coat of seagrass on the brown fence panels?
Thanks for such a warm welcome!
Sanjy67, most of the panels needed two coats, a couple needed three (ones that had been stained a darker colour previously).