Welcome to my new series of blog posts all about my plans for my garden makeover! I know there are probably lots of historical and underlying meanings that you can read into this nursery rhyme but I am simply using it to set the tone for summer, because with the holidays comes the opportunity (both weather-wise and time-wise) to get out into the garden and start making some changes, which is precisely what I’ve been doing.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle-shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.
When I think of this rhyme I imagine a cottage garden, boarders full of tall foxgloves (what I imagine to be the ‘bells’) and rambling roses. It’s the kind of garden I like – quaint, low-maintenance and traditionally British – full of colour, scent and stepping stones. What images do you conjure up in your mind when you read the nursery rhyme? I want to make a start in building the garden of my imagination and it starts here:
This is the starting point for my new garden. Grass. Okay, mostly weeds. It’s not a large garden, measuring only about 30ft x 40ft, and it’s at the back of the house. This photo is taken from the gate into the back garden. It’s overlooked by the neighbours’ gardens on two sides and looked rather barren. It’s hard to imagine that anything would grow on this bumpy plot of grass but hubby and I are going to have a good go at landscaping it, planting it up and hopefully even grow our own veggies. If you look carefully at the grass in the photo, you can see that my husband has mowed it into the shape of a heart, but that was the extent of our gardening attempts so far haha!
Look to the left from the back gate and you can see this view which houses the only other feature of the garden – my little vintage caravan. I’m still working on this project too but it will need to be moved to a new location once we start getting the garden in order. Here you can see the chain-link fence is overgrown with weeds at the side and behind the back-garden fence is the garage which faces the driveway.
Looking to the right from the gate you can see this view – the sheds and greenhouse are in the neighbours garden and the brick wall is part of an outdoor store cupboard, which is half joins onto the house. Over the coming weeks I’ll keep you updated with our plans, developments (no matter how dull!) and growth of our garden. Please get in touch if you have any tips or advice or are working on your own garden right now – I’d love to hear from you! Leave me a comment below or email [email protected]
