After initially tidying up the debris from the landlord's over zealous pruning, we started on the raised area of garden nearest to the cottage. A set of steps opposite the back door led up to it & it was the natural flow out from the kitchen. We first laid the stepping stones (which I had bartered some work for) where our planned pathways were to be & then started work on creating beds in the encompassed areas. We had to clear a lot of gravel (which was donated to neighbours paths) & bring in some local topsoil (donated to us).

 I used the large rocks that I dug out to make the edging for the new beds. This was the first of many 'problems' that we were to turn into 'solutions' in this garden.

 The first bed we planted was the one right opposite the back door, but it was also the area that was put into the shade of the cottage earliest in the day (see photo). This ultimately made it a good place to grow fast-bolting salads during the summer, but at that time (early spring) we needed to make the most of the sunnier areas too. The suntrap in the raised area was where the conifer trees had been beheaded by the landlord a month or so previously (many were never to recover). So we next prepared that bed (to the left of the photo) & planted most of our existing plants there to get them going.

 At this point we made our first real financial investment in the garden & went out & bought eight fruit trees (including a mulberry) to try & encourage the birds in to keep down slug & snail populations. So our next task was to plant the trees that we had bought.

  We positioned the dwarfing rootstock apples in what seemed like the best positions around the raised garden within the beds that we were creating & planted anything we had around them, including sprouting onions & parsnips from the kitchen! The pear trees we planted to the east of the cottage on the lower garden where they were in a slightly warmer microclimate. Then we planted the Mulberry in the centre of the whole garden where it would have the most space to grow & ultimately become a centrepeice that offered a bit of summer shade & lots of delicious fruit!

 The addition of a vertical layer in the garden made such a difference! Immediately birds appeared perching in the branches of the new trees & it felt like life was once again returning. Then I moved on to finishing a children's playhouse that I had started making at our previous address from waste wood that we had been given for our fire. But it was too good for that, so this playhouse started taking shape & it was finally finished here in our new garden.

 I decided that it would be nice to give it a rustic roof, but as I pondered what to use other jobs distracted me for a while. Then we laid a small play lawn around one of the pear trees to the east of the cottage (see below) & the turf offcuts were just asking to be used for this job. I didn't want to use plastic as an underlayer as that would have been visible from inside the house, so I just laid the turf over the structure & covered it with old chicken wire to hold it on. It remained green during the wet months of spring, but not for much longer once the summer got going.

 As you can see, having no waterproof base proved to be too dry a situation for the turf to remain green done this way & the joins never blended together. I later tried a second layer of turf offcuts from a neighbour over the top, but it was still too dry. Even so it was still a very popular playhouse, even when it was raining & the roof was leaking! In time it started filling with plants growing up from the gravel & this was then tended as a little 'indoor' garden.

 With a young child who was eager to get out into the garden, a single playhouse was not enough & all that gravel was proving far from an ideal play surface. So we decided to buy a small amount of turf & after pickaxing the ground over & bringing in some more free soil, we laid it around the pear trees. The play lawn became an immediately popular area, especially for two ex-battery chickens we had acquired, at which point we had to start fencing parts of it off to allow it the chance to regrow. Note also here the 'dead space' at the back of the photo where the rotary washing line sits; later to become the home to a conservatory.

 We then made a spiral bed, usually used for planting herbs, but ours was a bit more varied. The idea behind it being that it provides several diverse habitats in the same place, having both high (drier) & low (damper) beds as well as planting spaces facing all four directions. Thus, sun-loving, dry climate plants can be grown almost adjacent to shade & moisture lovers. It also looks quite unusual & gives height in such a flat area.

 Spirals are often made in combination with digging out a pond. The soil from the hole has to go somewhere, so it makes sense to make a feature of it & leave it there next to the pond (something I did later in the mobile home garden). We didn't make our spiral the usual way though, soil was a very scarce resource & couldn't be wasted at the bottom, but we did have plenty of tree prunings... After pickaxing the circle (on a particularly hot day I remember), we hammered in the spiral uprights (more of those useful old fencing stakes!). Then we used branches from the cut down trees to weave in & out & make 'walls' for the beds.

 Then we piled in plenty of green waste (mostly conifer clippings & unrotted compost on top) & finally topped it off with more soil & then the plants. This was another excellent example of the problem becoming the solution, the whole spiral was made from 'waste' materials. Over the first few months the spiral's soil level sunk a bit as the green waste settled & more soil was put on top to maintain it. A few years on, some plants have thrived there, whereas others have fallen victim to the chickens.

 This was a corner of the garden that was originally very dark because of the fence, so we removed one panel & opened up the flow through from the raised area at the same time. Having done this, the new path had to then negotiate a short bank. Once again a quick check on our resources enabled us to make these steps from logs cut from the trees during the landlord's pruning endeavours. This photo was taken later in the summer again, after the new planting had a chance to grow a little but before we decided to erect a chicken fence to protect this half of the garden from their over enthusiastic digging activities.

 We also fashioned a bird table from a birch trunk that was lying around (see left of picture) & this became another favourite spot for our feathered friends over the winter months. Being spring & having so little in the garden it was really important for us to get lots of seeds growing in trays to plant out later. We had already bought a lot from perusing various catalogues (Chilterns & Future Foods being our favourites), during the winter months & we were keen to grow everything!

 In the local newspaper adverts we were able to find a secondhand greenhouse that I bought, dismantled & brought home. This was only the beginning though as the ground once again needed preparing & there was going to be no way of swinging a pickaxe inside a greenhouse! Steve Charter just happened to be visiting though, so together we prepared the ground & set out the base. We had already reproofed the wood with an environmentally friendly coating, so putting it up afterwards was a fairly quick job. Then I utilised some more of that waste wood that I had used to make the playhouse, this time to make benching for inside the greenhouse.

 We used some rustic braches that we had found to make a fence surrounding the greenhouse, which both enclosed the area & created a safety barrier to prevent chilgdren inadvertently running into it. We were then also offered the use of two of our neighbours greenhouses for the spring & gratefully took advantage of this opportunity. Then disaster struck, we all fell really ill for several weeks & keeping the three greenhouses watered was a mammoth task. Just getting up & moving around was really difficult, but to pick up watering cans full of water & lift them up over the benches was almost impossible. Somehow we managed it & we came out of it with lots & lots of young plants for the garden, but it was a very difficult phase for us. Most of the plants we had were in those greenhouses & we couldn't afford to lose a whole season's growing at that point.

 We had lots of plants coming on & needing planting out & so once we had recovered our full health again, we carried on creating places to put them. The greenhouse soon filled up & produced lots of melons, tomatoes & cucumbers for us later in the summer. We also utilised the south facing fencing panels at the top end of the garden for growing tomatoes & vines & a few exotics. We planted kiwis (two females against the east fence & a male next to the hen shed). I had heard that the males were particularly vigorous, so I thought it a good idea to grow it over the hen shed to give some cooling shade in the summer.

 We also made the most of a vine & a fruiting passiflora growing over from next door along the garage wall & planted a passiflora ourselves. I erected a pergola over the pathway from the cottage to the caravan & garage (see design drawing) & we planted Akebia, Honeysuckle & another Passiflora to grow up it. It was also the obvious place to hang a swing from (it was very sturdy!) & so it became part of the play area too.

 We then set about making a pond using an old bath. We were lucky enough to find a particularly wide one at a local recycling yard, where upon mentioning that we were going to make a pond with it we were told we could have two for £5. Not wanting to turn this down we said "yes please!" & the other later became a pond in a friend's garden. Steve Charter helped us to pickaxe the hole again on another of his visits & we set it halfway into the ground, using the excavated rocks & sand to pack around the sides. A sloping bottom was made by using old bricks (from the hardcore) to make steps up towards one end & then covering it all with gravel, making a 'beach' in the shallows. The flatter rocks were ideal for edging it with & by the time a bit of imported soil was placed around & more beds made, it blended in very well. Pond plants were obtained from friends as gifts or bartered for & in no time the pond became a hive of activity. Insects & pond creatures appeared seemingly out of nowhere, occasionally a frog or toad would turn up & the birds would queue up to bathe at the shallow end on a regular basis. Once again, we could see that we had made a valuable habitat for wildlife & for virtually no cost either.

 This left us with a pile of small rocks at the other end which were clearly not going to make a nice looking rockery. It stayed that way for a little while & then the large stones that we needed arrived.

 Our new neighbours, for some reason (& we weren't going to argue) wanted to get rid of their own rockery & asked us if we wanted the stones. They couldn't have been much closer, which was probably a good job as some of the large stones took some lifting! The small rocks that we had already provided us with a good base over which to place the new larger ones & after finding ourselves happy with the look of it, we infilled the gaps with soil & planted it out.

 The rockery was one of our strategies to deal with the scratching habits of the chickens. We had been surrounding a lot of the plants on their side of the fence with rocks anyway to stop them digging plants up as they scratched around in the soil. Placing plants that were susceptible to such damage, but less likely to be eaten by the chickens, amongst large unmovable rocks would provide them with a lot more protection. The later use of 'cages' (such as upturned hanging baskets) over smaller plants, we found protected them well until they became better established & less vulnerable.

 These rocks also provided extra protection to the plants around them, by storing up heat from the sun during the day & releasing it slowly again during the night. As we created the rockery, placing the rocks in turn, we found three that were perfect for standing upright & so we decided to place them in a circle (or triangle actually!) on the small play lawn, where they soon looked very much at home.

 The other big project of the year was to erect the pergola. This was to serve several functions; to provide a room like quality for the small play lawn, to provide a vertical growing space for plants & to provide a place to hang a swing from for Holly. It also made a nice walkway, breaking up the view from the kitchen door of the shed & the caravan at the top of the garden (I built it at a slight angle to the direct line of view). I also had the idea of using it to support a gutter that would carry water from the cottage roof down into the pond via a pipe & a little stream made from recycled curved clay tiles.

 The second season became focussed almost entirely on building the conservatory. We had seen one advertised in the small ads of the paper to collect & it consisted of wooden framed windows, a few clear perspex roofing sheets, concrete blocks & chipboard flooring on a timber framework. The catch of course was that I had to dismantle it myself & by a rapidly approaching deadline. However, the problem was in a sense also the solution as it gave me the opportunity to note how it had been built as I took it apart. Although I had worked out that there were enough materials for our needs, we weren't going to be rebuilding it in quite the same way.

 I managed to get the windows, boards, roofing sheets & framework down, but the concrete block wall proved too difficult to take apart without breaking up the blocks. By the time the firm installing the replacement had sledgehammered the wall down, most of the blocks were in pieces (& we weren't short of hardcore at home either!). Fortunately, I came across a pile of rubble on the edge of a local industrial estate including previously used but entire concrete blocks. Our block problem was solved & I set about preparing the foundations using the first of our few newly bought materials; cement. Having drawn up the plans based around the window sizes that we had available I began to dig the foundations for the wall on which the windows would sit. There was already a three feet high retaining wall in front of the fence, made out of small, nicely faced blocks It ran at a slight angle to the cottage wall & the new conservatory was going to need to extend beyond it. So I took the wall down, using the soil behind (what a valuable resource!) on the garden beds & stacking up the stones to be used later to face the outside of the wall facing the lawn.

 Then I laid a foundation & built up the wall upon it, including a damp course layer of course. My next job was to seal the finished wall from behind & for this job I used a bitumen paint. This was necessary, so that I could backfill the wall to stabilise the earth bank & keep the fence posts stable. I needed something that would drain well & so I was able to use up some of our surplus gravel (of course - what a great trade, soil for gravel!). I then buried any available unsightly container that would hold plants (split buckets etc.) up to the rim in the gravel & filled them with soil. This made a new free-draining shady garden against the fence outside the conservatory windows. I delayed the planting up until I had finished putting up the windows & the roof structure, to avoid treading on any of the plants. Once the roof timbers were up (these were all reused from the original structure), it was time to knock the door through into the kitchen.

 We managed to pick a hot day, but with the help of a friend, a large sledgehammer & some dustmasks & dustsheets, we did it OK. Once we had got the messy job out of the way & the dust had all settled, I could put the roof on the structure. I had been fortunate to find some extra roofing sheets going free which were better than the originals & a couple of very cheap end-of-line new ones, which together covered the whole roof area. I used recycled guttering (which I routed to another water butt), but I needed to buy a couple of roof ridge pieces & some new washers & caps to screw the roof sheets down with.

 My next task was to install the door in the hole we'd knocked through & again I found some cheap end-of-line french doors & a frame that I could cut down to fit it which were just the right size for the job. The blockwork surrounding the door was filled in & replastered on the inside, while being simply rendered on the 'outside' (which was now also the inside!). The rest of the blocks on the inside were rendered & painted & the nice blocks used to face the outside of the wall. A bit of creative jigsawing was required to fit the last few pieces together, including making a small window from scratch out of offcuts, but when the whole structure was proofed (with an eco-friendly substance of course), it all blended together beautifully.

 The only structural work that then remained was to lay the floor. Out of principle I didn't want to lay a sheet of concrete, so I stacked up blocks on little concrete pads, with damp course laid over them & then laid the flooring support timbers on top of them. The chipboard flooring was not entirely reusable, so two extra sheets were bought to make up the shortfall in what we needed. The skirting was attached around the wall above the floor & windowsills installed (for all the plants we were going to be growing in there!). I later used an offcut from this windowsill board to make my Aikido sign.

 The new conservatory soon became a hive of activity & a place to grow on seeds in the spring & tender plants during the summer. It has become a place to play, sit & read & to enjoy meals, when it is not warm enough to be out in the garden. It is particularly of value as a very light space, attached to a cottage that has quite small windows & is relatively dark inside. Although it was a lot of hard work to build, it was well worth the effort in the end & it has certainly made the most of a previously 'dead' space.

Conservatory Costings

 The final financial costings for building the conservatory were:

• Secondhand conservatory windows, sliding patio door, roof sheets & timbers, chipboard flooring (£100).
• Sand - direct from local quarry (£10).
• Cement (£20).
• Concrete blocks & bricks - secondhand (free).
• Damp proof course & secondhand roofing sheets - gifted (free).
• Bitumen based damp proof compound (£10).
• Extra sheets of glass - from a skip (free).
• Old back door - from my parents (free).
• Miscellaneous salvaged timber (free).
• Rawlbolts (£15).
• Guttering - salvaged (free).
• End-of-line French doors & frame (£40).
• Two end-of-line roofing sheets & other roofing bits (£30).
• Flashing (£10).
• Ecological wood preserving compound (£20).
• Windowsill board (£40).
• Extra chipboard flooring (£15).
• Skirting board (£15).
• Light fitting (£10).
• Plaster for kitchen french doors opening (£10).
• Paint (£15).
• Carpet tiles - gifted by Julia's parents (free).
• Furniture - table & chairs secondhand (£15).

 The total cost of building the conservatory was £375; although this doesn't of course take into account my time, which I should sensibly have kept a record of.

 The experiment in hen-proof plants is ongoing, but like the rest of the garden, has provided useful information to make each season easier. The greenhouse provided bumper crops for a couple of years, but as needs change it has found its way to a new home & that corner has become a children's garden. All that remains of the gravel are on a few pathways, the last remaining large area (where the 'virtual driveway' went) now being a play lawn. The diversity of plants in the garden still increases & it becomes easier to maintain each year, there being little room for weeds to grow in between the myriad of plants. The main work involves keeping the laurel hedge trimmed back & the play lawns mown plus tidying up after the chickens! It is most certainly a garden for plants & wildlife & whilst some might find it a little overgrown for their tastes, I really enjoy the way everything grows together so well. It has certainly come a long way since being a car park.....

 An evaluation of this whole process can be found on the Design Review page.