The Story of a Garden (& a Gardener) So Far

18 months of growth

Hold on tight, folks, this is a long, long post. Too long for an email so click on through.

Having introduced myself the other day, I realised it is equally important to introduce you to my tiny garden, so often the subject of this Substack.

Below is a (largely pictorial) record of the journey so far. The photos are all taken by me, both on my iPhone and with my Smart Camera. I haven’t edited any beyond cropping and straightening so as to give an honest account. The iPhone photos especially are… very honest.

I hope it shows clear progress if nothing else!

THE LONG BEFORE - SALES PARTICULARS

When I started looking for a property to buy, I specified that I did not want a garden. I was explicit. I was working 100 hour weeks as a barrister and there simply was not time for anything else.

I very nearly bought a flat in a building that had a communal garden, and then a house that had sold its garden to be turned into one of those weird, largely-subterranean, new builds.

In the end - in what turned out to be a startlingly lucky decision in many ways - I bought a smaller, more affordable house, located in a less nice area so that I wasn’t stretching my borrowing to the absolute limit. It had a garden, but it was largely paved.

Accordingly to my camera roll, I did not take a single photograph of the garden at anytime before buying the house. All I have for a ‘beginning’ reference is a picture from the sales particulars which I’m not going to show you in case you reverse image search it, track down my address, and murder me.

In any event, the picture was taken years before the house was put on the market for sale so was wildly inaccurate.

By the time I bought the house, there was a shed and a bright-blue-tarp-covered wood store, lean-to thing taking up the left wall. The owners left a water butt hanging on the right-hand wall, as well as a very full compost bin in the back left corner bed.

THE BEFORE - MARCH 2022

I purchased the house in December 2021. Again, no photos. Not until three months later when I guess I was compelled to do a clear-out. That’s pretty much the last record I have of the garden until the following May. Probably this was because my sweet Belladog was due to arrive a couple of weeks later and I knew we’d be spending a lot of time out there potty training.

Here she is, my sweet angel baby, on her first day at home:

And playing with Leodog in the garden that first week. GAH (weeps forever):

Sorry, sorry. Back to the garden story…

THE GREAT RENOVATION - MAY 2023

In February 2023, I was signed off work. You can see from the state of my garden in early May that I was struggling (above, top).

Having suddenly nothing to do, I did a big clear out. On 3 May 2023, I went to the local dump to drop some stuff. Just around the corner from the dump is a garden centre, Neal’s. It is directly opposite Wandsworth Prison. I only knew it was there because it is where I bought my Christmas tree a few months before.

I was driving home from the dump when I made the spontaneous decision (#adhd) to pop to the garden centre and browse their house plant selection. I had successfully kept an Ikea ficus alive for a while and considered that this qualified me for a second plant.

Walking in, I was met with a sea of colourful perennials (above, bottom left).

And that was it. 3 May 2023, a day my life changed.

As you can see, I left with pots, plants, a hose, and completely the wrong kind of compost… (above, bottom right).

And so it began. I have been at Neal’s probably at least once a week since then.

I don’t know what possessed me to start pulling up the paving. You can see it was in bad shape, but I don’t recall specifically why I started. I think I started pulling it up in order to deepen the bed that already existed on the left. I do know that the process of doing so, two months after I had been signed off work with ‘burn out’, was deeply cathartic. Once I started, I couldn’t be stopped.

Very gradually, over the months that followed, I dug out every single plant I had inherited with the garden, but initially many stayed. The giant Forsythia that took up most of the raised bed on the right was one of the first things to go. My position has softened but at the time I was a strictly no-yellow-in-the-garden person. Between the Forsythia, a very mature ivy, and a very established jasmine, I was gleefully hacking away, cursing and sweating, for those first few days.

JUNE 2023

A month later, I had spent almost every second in (and every penny in my bank account on) the garden. Knowing nothing at all about gardening, I unrolled some grass where the central paving had been. Needless to say it did not thrive.

JULY 2023

AUGUST 2023

The bright orange Dahlia was a gift from a mentor and friend, a phenomenally capable Judge, who generously shared her love of gardening with me. An early insight into the many ways gardens and gardening can draw people together.

SEPTEMBER 2023

There is little to report, then, until the following spring. As I’ve said, I didn’t know anything about winter gardening and so left things as they were save for planting up a few tulip bulbs into pots.

APRIL 2024

The world’s smallest lawn having been a miserable failure, I put down a very measly patch of gravel. Also a miserable failure. You really need to put down a LOT of gravel, otherwise it all just sinks into the mud over time…

My ambition had grown considerably in the few months I’d been gardening, and I started the spring with a trip to Argos for a £20 arch for climbers.

MAY 2024

12 months of gardening and my eyes were much, much bigger than my stomach. My first attempt to grow things from seed had me absolutely hooked. There were seedlings everywhere. My kitchen was a potting shed. Every available surface was seedling storage.

JUNE 2024

I had so many seedlings for cut flowers that in the end I bought and erected a metal raised bed to house them.

JULY 2024

I tried to be chill about the errant bright orangy-red poppies that appeared in my pot of poppies but honestly they were unwelcome.

AUGUST 2024

I had buckets and buckets of Cosmos for months. I had sown about 27 different varieties. Some did not survive, others failed to thrive, but still I had posies to take to friends wherever I went for months. In 2025 I will try and be better at editing my seed selections…

SEPTEMBER 2024

David died in September, and that was really the end of my paying attention to and documenting the garden this year, save for what you’ve seen posted here.

I have so much to tell you about my plans for the months to come. In addition to hands-on gardening, this year I have spent every moment I can visiting other gardens, listening to podcasts and reading books about gardening, and I am ready to have another stab at making this tiny garden into something really beautiful, pleasing, and pollinator-friendly in 2025!