From the ground up – planting my dream garden

We upgraded to a three-bedroom house – which also happened to be falling apart (only reason we could afford it). Instead of gardening, all of our energy was focused on fixing up the house. And instead of an absolutely enormous garden, we were now faced with a relatively tiny space at the back, only accessible through a side door from the kitchen. At least, we assumed it was tiny – we couldn’t see much through the overgrown wilderness. It was so dense and unkempt that we discovered a bicycle rusting beneath the grass, weeds and mass of brambles that we eventually cleared away.

We made an effort to take control once the jungle had been cleared. A lawn was planted and I chose a multitude of unusual shrubs from London’s Columbia Road Flower Market to populate the empty beds. But unlike my previous garden, which was large enough to house an orchard, the new space was small and cursed with clay soil. After ten years, my untended shrubs (spot the toddler below among them) had grown so big they were fighting each other for space. As for the lawn – it had lost the good fight against the waterlogged soil, overhanging plants, NW aspect and resilient weeds.