The First Years in the Garden | First Year

We moved into our first home in the May. It had a very small front garden but a reasonably sized back garden. It was neat and tidy apart from one isolated section that had not been tended for some years and was full of perennial weeds. Little did I know what a difficult gardeners year I had ahead of me.

Once settled in I wanted to start to sort out the garden and get some colour into it. That summer turned out to be the hottest for some years. The soil was quite heavy clay that once dried out made it almost impossible to drive in a garden fork. The back lawn developed cracks and began to go yellow but I was determined to make a start.

Being a newlywed with any spare cash allocated to home building this was very much gardening on a budget. I bought a few packets of seed based purely on the pictures on the packet and the fact that they could be sown directly into the ground.

Once the seeds germinated they were thinned and spread around the borders which only contained polyanthus and a couple of hydrangeas. I hadn't got a clue how it would turn out but maybe this was a case of fortune favouring the brave. I cannot remember all that was sown but I do remember clarkias and gypsophila.

The neighbours backing onto the bottom of the garden leaned over and said "You should be given the award for the most improved garden." If that wasn't an incentive to carry on I don't know what is.

The patch full of perennial weeds was attacked and forked over very carefully. I dread to think now how much couch grass I removed. An experienced gardener I worked with told me I would not be able to get rid of it all but I forked it over many times and found every little bit of root that I could. Some little bits did show themselves and were quickly removed and eventually I beat it without having to resort to weed killer. The bonus was that I ended up with superb workable soil. This area was destined to become my vegetable garden and we had many good crops of home grown tasty vegetables in the coming years.

The gardening book which was a wedding present proved invaluable and a source of inspiration for many years. Written by a well known gardening television presenter of the time it was filled with his many years of experience and just as importantly good quality colour pictures. Those photographs really sparked my imagination even though most of them I had never seen in reality. It was disappointing to find that most shrubs pictured were too big for my patch but as it turned out would be become fixtures in a future garden.

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