We moved here in late 2014, drawn at least in part by the garden. It’s quite large - for a town garden - and previous owners have divided it into distinct areas by the use of hedges, fences, trellising & a pergola.

The only significant change we’ve made is to have paths laid in order to go from A to B without muddy feet or harm to plants.

There are 3 mature trees on our boundary - horse chestnut, sycamore & ash - so have vast quantities of autumnal leaves to collect. We made a leaf cage, 4 years ago, & now benefit from leaf mould to use around the garden.
We also have 3 large compost bins, & manage to recycle all our herbaceous waste, grass cuttings, cardboard & some newspaper. (We no longer need a ‘green bin’ collection from the Council). It was quite a thrill to use the first bag of home made compost.

This feels like an enclosed ‘room’, at a slightly sunken level. And so we reduced the lawned area, almost surrounded it with paths & borders, & now have a peaceful place to sit. (Possibly excepting playtime at adjacent school, when some choice language can be heard. And, as one wit said, “that’s just the teachers”).

No, sadly, that’s not a swimming pool (just glimpsed through the arch) but protective fleece over a patch of newly seeded lawn. This section also includes the soft fruit beds, inherited from previous owners, which keep us in Summer Puddings.
Our sole addition has been an asparagus plot. It’s not been a total success: we put in 18 crowns and, 4 years later, only 3 of them are still alive & they’ve only just started producing (some spindly stems).

One highlight of the garden is the constant birdsong. We probably owe this to the dense, mixed planting - such as here - and by the ‘cover’ provided by extensive mature hedging. So far we’ve seen sparrow, dunnock, blue tit, long-tailed tit, coal-tit, wren, blackbird, thrush, starling, blackcap, goldfinch, crow, jackdaw, pigeon, seagull, robin, magpie and - more rarely - sparrow-hawk, kestrel, tree creeper and pheasant.

The weathervane was made for us by a local blacksmith, Stephen Mather (of Holburn, near Lowick), copying a Daily Telegraph photo of 2 crows which we’d kept from a few years ago.

From the previous house owner we inherited some large, glazed pots (with some commensurately large hostas, all much loved by slugs). One plant we’ve added to this fine pot area - just visible at left of photo - is a mulberry (‘Charlotte Russe’); a dwarfing variety, supposedly good in pots. (Three years on; we’re waiting).

This joins a number of other fruit trees around the garden: Bramley apple, Victoria plum, two eating apples, a greengage and a pear (all of unknown varieties).

We moved here in late 2014, drawn at least in part by the garden. It’s quite large - for a town garden - and previous owners have divided it into distinct areas by the use of hedges, fences, trellising & a pergola.

The only significant change we’ve made is to have paths laid in order to go from A to B without muddy feet or harm to plants.

There are 3 mature trees on our boundary - horse chestnut, sycamore & ash - so have vast quantities of autumnal leaves to collect. We made a leaf cage, 4 years ago, & now benefit from leaf mould to use around the garden.
We also have 3 large compost bins, & manage to recycle all our herbaceous waste, grass cuttings, cardboard & some newspaper. (We no longer need a ‘green bin’ collection from the Council). It was quite a thrill to use the first bag of home made compost.

This feels like an enclosed ‘room’, at a slightly sunken level. And so we reduced the lawned area, almost surrounded it with paths & borders, & now have a peaceful place to sit. (Possibly excepting playtime at adjacent school, when some choice language can be heard. And, as one wit said, “that’s just the teachers”).

No, sadly, that’s not a swimming pool (just glimpsed through the arch) but protective fleece over a patch of newly seeded lawn. This section also includes the soft fruit beds, inherited from previous owners, which keep us in Summer Puddings.
Our sole addition has been an asparagus plot. It’s not been a total success: we put in 18 crowns and, 4 years later, only 3 of them are still alive & they’ve only just started producing (some spindly stems).

One highlight of the garden is the constant birdsong. We probably owe this to the dense, mixed planting - such as here - and by the ‘cover’ provided by extensive mature hedging. So far we’ve seen sparrow, dunnock, blue tit, long-tailed tit, coal-tit, wren, blackbird, thrush, starling, blackcap, goldfinch, crow, jackdaw, pigeon, seagull, robin, magpie and - more rarely - sparrow-hawk, kestrel, tree creeper and pheasant.

The weathervane was made for us by a local blacksmith, Stephen Mather (of Holburn, near Lowick), copying a Daily Telegraph photo of 2 crows which we’d kept from a few years ago.

From the previous house owner we inherited some large, glazed pots (with some commensurately large hostas, all much loved by slugs). One plant we’ve added to this fine pot area - just visible at left of photo - is a mulberry (‘Charlotte Russe’); a dwarfing variety, supposedly good in pots. (Three years on; we’re waiting).

This joins a number of other fruit trees around the garden: Bramley apple, Victoria plum, two eating apples, a greengage and a pear (all of unknown varieties).