The Lost Garden of Poutland

BTW, pop back in the week for more posts, but they'll be briefer!!



She Sheds.
Sheds aren't just for men.

If you know me well or use the search tool in the sidebar and see just how many times I've written about sheds on what is essentially a girlie blog, it will be no surprise that I'm super excited about my new shed!


Everything in the garden is rosy.

The ceonothus.

The blossoming cherry tree.

A sneaky self-described fatsia japonica.

The rhubarb.

The whatever -this -is-called!

But not everything in the garden is rosy.  Today I want to bare all and show you the seedier side of my garden.  The bit in the back corner that I turned a blind eye to and ignored its existence for many, many years.

This.

You think this is bad? But it was much worse than this before TP and I set to and called it a project.

Brace yourself, 

for it looked like this. Embarrassing, right?

In effect, it was an unused part of the garden that didn't exist in my mind, yet it gets the afternoon and evening sun in bucketloads.

I was able to ignore it as it's tucked in behind a high solid wall so it was very much out of sight, out of mind.

But soon -

Instead of looking at a mismatch of old fencing and knee high weed,

I'll be sitting in here looking out on a tidy patio
 (and maybe with a G&T for company!).

Instead of The Leaning Sheds of Poutland

there will sit this very upright She Shed.

 The left Leaning Shed holds old furniture that I can't bear to throw away.

I'll clean it all up and do a paint job on that furniture

and use it to furnish my She Shed!

Clever eh?  Still a furniture dumping ground but all looking pretty and in use.

I wish I could say that was my ingenious idea, but it was TP's!

And talking of TP - I told  sweetly asked him to stand here as a yardstick so you can see it's size.  

The Man Shed bit is through that rather plain little door on the right.  Much detritus will be ruthlessly dumped to fit the essential paraphernalia of a garden into the new Man Shed, a space half it's former size.  

I'm guessing I won't be holding each dried up paint pot and asking if it brings me joy ...

I've been using an old table next to the shed to pot up.  Heaven's knows where I'll do that now, for there will be no out of sight area for my messiness!

 Do you find that you get mess-creep in your garden?   I do!

   And as I turned a blind eye to the shed area in the back corner of the garden, so I began ignoring the neighbouring bed in the foreground of this pic.

The bed needs to be reduced to accommodate the new patio so I'm going to keep it simple going forward -  just the existing magnolia tree surrounded by a circle of fragrant lavender.   Simple planting and swathes of colour make more impact, IMHO.  And it will be a doddle to maintain.

So out of one project comes another.   Projects morph.

Do you find that?  Projects breed more projects?

And now I'm not just replacing ugly sheds, I'm reclaiming a HUGE chunk of the garden.

An area that couldn't be seen from the rest of the garden or the house - but going forward I'm going to make sure every darned guest sees it in all its spruced-up glory!

I hope that you don't mind me showing you the warts and all part of my garden today?  Was it a shock to the system?!

But I've pretended it hasn't existed for years and this feels like "coming out".

And now it's going to feel like I've liberated a chunk of garden,  magically increasing the garden's size (or like stealing 10% of garden from my neighbour!).

For this truly is The Lost Garden of Poutland.

A la perchoine,

Mary x.  

I'd love to hear from you.  

Do you have a bit of garden you turn a blind eye to?  

Do you have a She Shed?  

Do you have any garden projects going on or just finished?

And if you are so kind as to leave a comment, please pop back in a day or two because I do put thought and time into replying.