Hello.

Hello everyone.
I finally joined this forum after lurking for a while
I live in South East Scotland, in a fairly quiet rural village.
My garden is a work in progress at the moment. Although I'm in a rented property (council), I do have permission from the landlord to improve the garden.
So far, I've had new fencing put up, an area to one side has had gravel laid and I've had a raised bed built out of reclaimed railway sleepers.
I'd like to get a small greenhouse (8 x 6), which will sit on the gravel at the bottom (South facing) corner. So far, I have been working with a couple of those plastic mini (blowaway) growhouses. I have a 4 tier one, a 6'4" tall x 4'5" wide x 2' deep walk in growhouse, and one of the tomato growhouses. All have stood up well to the gale force winds we've had here so far, and I've started off lots of plants from seed in them.

The garden is basically a blank canvas at the moment.
The area I'm working on is our back garden, although we do have a strip up one side as our "front" garden. The front garden is a long strip around 12 - 14 feet wide x about 35 feet long, and has some mature shrubs growing along the fence line(Cherry laurel, photinia "red robin", buddleia davidii, a holly, a pieris, another shrub I can't remember the name of and a fairly tall and rather beautiful eucalyptus gunnii at the top). Those shrubs and the eucalyptus were planted where they are by my Gran, around 25 to 30 years ago. They give the front garden a woodland edge sort of feeling.

The back garden is approximately 5m wide by 8m long (I know...mixing metric and imperial ). Standing with my back to the house, the garden faces West North West.
Because the house is an upper maisonette, we have a shared path running along the back between the building and my garden, so the ground immediately behind my fence isn't directly against the house. That border in my garden has full sun for most of the day.
The area to the right as I go in through my garden gate also has full sun all day (that's where my gravel area and raised bed is).
At the far side opposite my gravel, where my fence is between my garden and my neighbour, that side is in shade until mid afternoon then full sun until dusk. The bottom edge of the garden is shaded at one end and sunny at the other.
In the middle, there's an ancient drying green. The ground is very uneven and lumpy, full of weeds including ground elder, and the grass that's there is very patchy. I'd like to improve the grass so that it is more level, and keep on top of the weeds.
I don't have children, just myself, my 75 year old Mum and my 11 year old Staffie live here (although the neighbour's young children are a PITA because they have no boundaries - they have wrecked my old fence, killed plants by pulling up the sticks I had to support the plants, broken my garden kneeler by climbing on it and standing on it, the little boy has kicked my dog, plus so much more that I had to have a 6 foot high palisade fence put up to keep them out of my garden ).

So as you can see, I have a bit of a project to work on. I'd like to have a cottage garden/wildlife friendly set up plants wise.
Oh, the soil is a lovely, free draining loam. I'm not sure of the ph levels though so I have ordered a soil testing kit.
I suspect the front garden might be more acidic due to the pieris thriving so much that it flowers every year, (so does the eucalyptus...and the holly ) and the back garden more alkaline as there's a 30+ year old hebe thriving and flowering very well in the North facing corner.

Lastly, I'm having to do things a little at a time because I have both osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, and I have to pay a (very very good) professional landscaper/fencing contractor to do any heavy work.

 

Welcome to Gardeners Corner

 

Hello.

 

Hi there...welcome to GC

 

Hi CJ,
Welcome to Gardeners Corner

 

Hi and welcome CreakyJoints

 

Hi and welcome! Your garden sounds like a very exciting project, just the right combination of 'blank canvas' and 'things in place'. Looking forward to updates as you progress with your plans

 

Welcome to Gardeners Corner CreakyJoints.

 

Hello and welcome...

 

Thank you all for the welcomes
My soil testing kit, distilled water and new garden hose have all arrived now, so I can get on with finding out which plants to grow in which part of the garden.
The hose is a very much needed piece of equipment, because so far, I've had to carry buckets of water down the stairs to fill up a container for doing any watering

 

Hello and welcome :-)

 

Welcome to GC

A blank canvas how exciting will look forward to watching its progress

 

Hello & to the forum @CreakyJoints.