If you’ve read my previous posts you’ll probably know that Andy and I have been doing a bit of a garden makeover this year.  We’ve lived at our house for four and a half years now, and during that time have totally gutted the inside (even though I’ve got plans to change some things again eeeek), and landscaped the front of the house, including a new driveway. Late last summer we had a new patio and pathway laid in the back garden, and this summer we’ve refined and finished some of the areas in the back garden, which is very long and looks down onto an old railway track at the very bottom.

Before and After Pics – Garden Makeover

This is the Estate Agent’s picture of the garden when we bought the house.

You can see a bit more of the old patio in the picture below, and also the old path by the tree that led nowhere! Just to the other edge of the rockery.

And here’s what it looks like now.

As well as the new sandstone patio (Mountain Mist) and curved pathway leading up the garden, we’ve painted the wall and added new coping stones, built a Koi pond (not this year, but that’s another story and blog post!), laid a circular lawn, planted the borders, replaced the fencing, added a stone circle, and done other general landscaping. At the same time as having the patio laid we set the wall back by the end of the house on a curve to create room for our barbeque, as it was just dead space before.

This is the lawn and border area at the beginning of the year before we started getting stuck in. We had been gradually planting the borders since moving in, but as you can see they needed refining!

We dug up the old lawn and laid a new one. I also painted the new fence panels black, which has made such a difference and made the plants pop.

To add to the tropical vibe of the garden design, which we are loving at the moment, we planted a palm tree (Washingtonia) and tree ferns.  Check out how much our banana plant (Musa basjoo) has grown this year (compare the before and after pic).  😯 The LED BBQ sign was Andy’s find from Morrisons. We’ll probably add more decoration to go with this next year.

Andy covered up the back of our neighbours brick shed with 8ft feather edge panels to match the rest of the new fencing (you can see the finished result in the 2 pics above) as the area was too big for a standard fence panel.

First, he made a wooden frame out of treated timber,

then screwed the individual panels to the frame.

Planning the Landscaping – Garden Makeover

When planning the design and landscaping of the patio and path for the garden makeover, we wanted the pathway to snake around the borders whilst also linking with the circular lawn.  The below before picture shows the planned rough outline with a hosepipe and rope.

Here’s a view from above now. You can just see a tiny part of my garden bar area in the bottom left-hand corner.

We also created a low maintenance area to the left-hand side of the pond.

Here’s how the path links with the garden border and lawn.

Grey Stone Circle

As part of the garden makeover, we added a stone circle next to the pond for our updated bistro set. This was the area before.

We cleared away the blocks and gravel that were in situ and dug out a foundation for the new circle.

This is the area now.

Garden Decoration

We decorated the garden with pots, plants, ornaments and hanging baskets to add interest.

The face plant pot was from Next (unfortunately no longer available).

Future Garden Projects

Here’s a sneaky peek at the DIY wine bottle screen we’ve also been working on, and take a look at how I made the DIY solar chandelier above the bistro set. We’ve also got plans for a man cave, secret garden and vegetable plot.

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No doubt we’ll be embellishing on the garden design next summer and also tackling the junkyard at the bottom (you haven’t seen this yet  😯  ). Have you been doing any work on your garden this summer? Feel free to comment below and let me know what you think.

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