Overall, the whole garden went well, certainly the speed at which we were able to turn it into a semi-jungle again. Specifically there were highlights, as some things just seemed to fall into place so easily & it was always great to use what we had to make something we needed. Playhouse: The playhouse was a success because of it's popularity with children, the way it just blended into it's environment & in the way it was made completely from 'waste' materials. It didn't take long to put together & it was constantly being used as the centrepiece for some kind of game, even on rainy days when the roof leaked.

  Pond: Making the pond from an old bath was again highly satisfying because everything we used would be considered by most people to be rubbish. The bath costs us a measly £2.50 & that was the sum total of all we had to spend on it. When it was finished & the edge was lined with rocks we had dug out of the ground, it blended beautifully into the rockery. Only it's essentially uniform shape gave away any clue about it's beginnings.

 Steps: The steps were also a really good use of waste. The landlord had left the trunks of the trees he had cut down & they were perfect for creating the steps we needed. They were literally right there. The difference that it made to that corner of the garden, just by taking out that one fence panel was really significant & the panel was then used to help close off the original driveway entrance (& create more south-facing growing area). The job was done in a morning & was definitely a good example of 'least change for greatest effect'.

 Trees: Planting the trees also made a big difference to the garden & to how we appreciated it. Getting them in gave us an immediate feeling of having really started & they brought birds back into the garden straight away. They were also starting to yield fruit for us in their second year, a couple really well. Tree planting always generates good feelings for me. Even the planting around them worked out well. The sprouting onions & parsnips seemed to be very good companions, as the trees stayed free of pests. We ate the parsnip seed in salads & a bonus was the large number of parsnips that had self-sown themselves by the following spring!
 

 While our overall experience of the garden was a very enjoyable one, there were elements of the implementation that proved to be challenging. Four of which immediately spring to mind. Digging: From the beginning, we had to dig, or should I say pick our way painfully slowly down into the earth. To a degree, we could have laid more soil on top, but we had to be sparing with what we had at times & without at least loosening it up, roots had no chance of penetrating the surface. How much easier it is to just shove a sheet of mulch over a lot of weeds & wait.... Waiting in this case wasn't going to get us anywhere, unless we were prepared to wait for trees to slowly break up the surface with their roots over decades. We weren't. So digging it was & it was not much fun, even the hens couldn't be much help with those big boulders on a surface that the local council would have been proud of in one of their car parks. Still, there is a certain satisfaction at the idea of digging up car parks to make gardens.....

 Illness: The next challenge was one that was relatively short-lived, but it was a real make or break period for us & that was when we were ill for three weeks during the first spring. Having got the use of three greenhouses & filled them all up with seeds that needed our close attention, we were suddenly the ones who needed caring for. Having said that we couldn't have been expected to see it coming. We had been working hard on the garden, but never before in my life had I been ill at the same time as the only other person there who might be able to care for me, plus we had a little girl to nurse too! I don't think it could really be seen as a fault of the design.

 Chickens: This might not be the case though with the chickens. Traditionally (well, in permaculture design anyway), they are considered to fit well into a design, however we learned that its not quite that straightforward. Yes, they do eat slugs & snails (& worms) & so on, but plant damage prevented this way was made up for by the plants that the hens ate. It wasn't just the eating either, unless a plant was well established & often protected by surrounding them with rocks (of which we had plenty), then they would usually be dug up. The lawn was obviously suffering early on & needed fencing off regularly to keep it from going bald. Mind you, we hardly ever had to mow it!

 It wasn't even possible to tell what they would eat; I once planted out some rhubarb thinking that it would be safe & yet the leaves were devoured almost immediately & I had to move it again. It seemed that the more poisonous to humans the plant was (i.e Nicotiana), the more likely they were to eat it. In the end we fenced right across the garden to keep them on the one side & the difference in the plant growth on the two sides was very apparent. Whatever damage the slugs & snails were doing, it wasn't anything compared to the two hens! Oh yes, but they were very healthy on it & apparently laid fantastic eggs (which none of us apart from the dog ate, though he did seem to approve!). They were very lovely, but probably a bit too much for a garden that size.

 Conservatory: The big challenge for me in the second year was building the conservatory. We were initially very excited about it, we had obtained secondhand windows & reclaimed concrete blocks, along with some secondhand plastic corrugated glazing sheets. We had the nice stones out of the old retaining wall to use to face the blocks & so we didn't have to spend much money at all on the project. What I didn't bargain for was the amount of time it was going to take & the distractions that would divert me from getting it finally finished. In itself, it distracted me from the garden virtually all that season & it seemed like it would never be completed. In the end it was probably worth it (it would have been more so had I stayed living there!), but it made a great use of a dead space & apart from misjudging the timescale I think it was a very good element to include in the design.
 

 Most of these are fairly small, which is probably a good thing, though all of them taught me something valuable. Perhaps the biggest 'do differently' for me would be the chickens. They were very lovely & I would never have harmed them, but they just didn't work as a good design element in a garden that small. They did very well from it, but a lot of the plants didn't, it wasn't a very mutually beneficial relationship. The turf roof I would certainly do differently & I have since bought a book that will help me with that in future. It was a good job that it was a small scale experiment!

 A couple of the trees didn't thrive either. One we planted too near the laurel hedge & it found it difficult competing for nutrients as well as needing rescuing regularly from being surrounded by laurel shoots. The mulberry probably needed a much bigger hole & a lot more soil in it, but digging was very difficult & we apparently didn't give it enough of a head start. It never did well & £22 was a big investment in the garden for us at the time. It was probably a mistake to have planted the Comfrey in such a sunny spot. The logic at the time went that we needed lots of fertility in the garden & so giving the Comfrey one of the best spots would be a good way to achieve that quickly. However, it never did as well as the Comfrey that I later planted in the shade in my Mobile Home garden & other sun-loving plants would probably have benefited more from being in that space instead.

 The water catchment off the shed wasn't in a good place for accessing it. We had to walk across a lawn that had been laid on brought in soil that was too heavy in clay & which waterlogged easily. On top of that a Buddleia in the corner gradually grew across in front of the barrel & there wasn't any room to move it further across. Later, I also diverted run-off from the conservatory roof into it as well (the only real option) & this caused regular overflows, making the lawn even wetter (& even less likely to be crossed to collect the water!). The conservatory floor doesn't seem to have worked either. Chipboard flooring came with the windows, but the damp proofing methods I used either didn't work or the condensation dripping onto it in the winter has caused parts of it to rot. I might also reconsider where we sited the greenhouse, though it did seem the best compromise at the time (just allowing a vehicle to pass & access the garage, which was how I later got the caravan back out of the garden again).

 Time invested: Finally I would pay more attention now to how much time I have invested in creating both the garden & the conservatory. This is important information that I need to be aware of when doing designs for other people & accurately costing them. This was the main reason that my costings for the School garden later gave me so many problems & this ultimately brought the whole project to a halt.

Home Page | My Ten Designs | Design Summary | Design Process | Implementation | Final Design | Site Map