If you follow me on my social media sites, you might know that I’ve been helping to redesign my Grandma Barbara’s Garden. Started back in July 2020, we’ve worked on it together at weekends and school/college holidays, whenever we could squeeze a session in. Sometimes we were so busy we forgot to take ‘before & after’ photos, but my Grandma always wrote a little log of what we achieved. Here’s the first in a series of blogs

Notes from Grandma’s Gardening Diary

When George and I first began to ‘transform’ my garden I took notes to look back on, a reminder of just what we accomplished in the mammoth task ahead. This is an abridged version of the diary notes:

It was at the beginning of the first lockdown in 2020, when we’d had particularly good weather that I had done the usual tidying up and a bit of planting; I stood back and thought it was time to make a change and do something to make the space look at least a bit more interesting. Enter George! It was around the beginning of July before he was ‘allowed’ to join me, but he was quick to come up with ideas and get stuck in. A project for him and masses of help for me.

First job – George began to dig up some bricks that had been laid to form a section of a path. They were always covered in moss and weeds, so he painstakingly took out every brick, cleaned it, cleared the area, and re-laid them in sharp sand. They looked great and made such a difference.

Next step was to improve an existing flowerbed which was untidy and ill planted. It spreads about 2 metres down one side and just opposite I have a small swing seat. George thought it would be good to make it a bright, colourful area, one that I could enjoy ‘staring’ at whenever I was having a little sit down, maybe with a glass of wine or two!

We just needed something to hold back the soil. George fancied building a low wall, but we thought it a little ambitious, so, when his Dad suggested using bricks upended and slightly at an angle then sunk into the soil, it was a no-brainer…….and what did we use? Yes, the bricks that George had previously and so patiently ‘cleaned & polished’ and reset. Bless him, he didn’t moan too much and got on with the task. The result is amazing. Having never done anything like it before, it turned out perfectly. Just what we wanted.

Old plants out, new ones in, lots of fresh soil and it looked fab.

We have a robin who comes to visit us now and again. He’s gradually spending more time sat on the fence watching us at work and probably looking out for the worms we unearth.

In the next blog, there’s a flurry of activity in Autumn!