A Long Time Ago, In a Garden Far Away...

When we bought our house in early 1999 it looked like this - mainly turfed, severely sloping and some steps cut into the steepest part of the slope. We'd also got an extra 5 metres (15 feet) more than we should have - a planning protest from the houses behind meant the builders had to put in a 'buffer zone' between the gardens. This area was to be left for 5 years to enable the plants put in by the builders to grow and establish a green corridor between the houses. In reality our part of the 'buffer zone' had random plants stuck into it (mainly dogwood and birch), most of it wasn't planted at all and bindweed was planning on making a take over bid for the entire plot.

So we spent over a year just staring at our 50x50 foot plot wondering what to do. We decided to work mainly with what we were given in terms of contours. We liked the steps and we wanted to have a journey round the garden. A patio was a must (see the archive articles brought in from Veg Plotting at the end of this blog for a more detailed account of the patio's design) and I insisted on having a building in which I could happily potter. At about my 20th attempt, the rough design looked something like this:

The slope called for terracing, so we knew that this would mean building walls beyond our capability and patience. We had three people round to give us quotes. The one we finally chose improved on the original design and produced this:

We liked the plan (except for the patio planting which got moved to in front of next door's garage wall) and then had to persuade our neighbours and the planning department to accept the work involving the 'buffer zone' being done 4 years ahead of the end of the covenant placed on our house. NAH spent a lot of time and effort on this and thankfully was successful. The build went ahead in the summer of 2000 and took 8 weeks to complete. Planting started during the Sydney Olympic Games (with me rushing in every so often to watch the cycling and swimming) and continues to this day as I can't resist fiddling with the borders and buying new plants. I'm currently planning to replant major parts of the garden, but am very happy with the hardscaping aspects of the design.

Whilst we decided to work with the garden's contours, a small digger still was needed to move soil around, especially for the terracing. We also discovered during the site survey that the garden slopes on the diagonal into the south-western corner at the bottom of the garden, so one side of the terrace is a single layer and the other side double.

Most of the paving's in place and planting of the single terrace has started.

The lawn's been turfed and the lower patio awaits a lovely new shed - more on that later...

Did you start with a blank canvas like me, or did you inherit your garden? What was it like when you took it over and what changes have you made?