A brief history of the Garden

I will be mixing it up a bit by blogging and Vlogging here on my website and YouTube channel depending on what I feel like. But it will always be gardening and cooking related. I want to introduce you to my little bit of paradise, my garden. And in particular how it has developed over the years.

We moved to Lincolnshire in 2001 from London and the garden was already very established with shrubs, perennials and many other flowering plants. The house and garden date back to 1839. It is a walled garden, about 85ft x 45ft, North West facing with our garages and a lane at the rear. It was very much a flower and plant garden without any fruit or vegetables. However the planting was fantastic with beautiful roses and hardy perennials

The garden started changing as a result of our 70ft wall on the right hand side of the garden falling in the night. Yes it did!!! Mind you I think the wall dated back to the 1830’s when the house was built and we were already concerned about the lean on it. After a few nights of summer storms it decided to topple over in one piece.

It was a year after moving in and my Mum was visiting from Australia. She heard the almighty crash at about 2am because she was sleeping in the room at the back of the house.

The wall being rebuilt with enough bricks to build a small bungalow

As you can see from the photos, the double brick thick wall inflicted major damage to our established flower border. In fact here was no border left after the workmen had finished. Apparently it contained enough bricks to build a small bungalow. The wall belonged to our neighbour so we were very grateful that, not only did he pay for the repaired wall, he also gave us money for new plants. We filled the border with some shrubs and roses and perennials to replace those lost and it looked very nice for a while.

I suppose the reason the Garden was only flowers and shrubs when we arrived was because the previous owners also had an allotment plot a short walk away. We took over the plot from them and so we kept the house garden pretty much untouched apart from the new wall border replanting. At one point I actually took on a second allotment but it all got a bit much. At the time I was also trying to have a career as an Opera Singer and just couldn’t keep up with the gardening work required so I gave them both up. However, I really missed growing my own fruit and vegetables. I have been doing it forever and so something had to be done.

Very slowly I started to pull out the roses and shrubs we had planted and started planting vegetables instead. I potted up the roses and moved a lot of the shrubs and then started growing veg again.

This made me very happy.

I also had an inherited lean to greenhouse at the bottom of the garden so that made me happy as well. However, the pergola that stood next to it was falling apart and so we decided to clear the lot and start again in the space. This is still work in progress. Mr N has promised me a new greenhouse and hopefully when Covid subsides we can make the investment and get the work done.

By 2018 I had quite a decent Veg patch and was harvesting my own produce which was nice but it obviously wasn’t enough because in May of that year I built my first raised bed.

I used anything I could find, old boards lying around, pieces of wood and I filled it with all the old compost from my tomatoes in pots from the previous year.

Now we were in business.

This is how the vegetable garden grew. Raised bed after raised bed. I now have 12 raised beds all about 1 metre square except for my first one that I made which is bigger.

This year 2020 brought about the biggest changes in the veg garden. Because of Lockdown we had time to put more raised beds in and so added another 4 beds.

I also got a zip up greenhouse which has been very challenging because of the gale force winds we have had this year. Anyhow it doesn’t matter because my growing empire continues to get bigger.

At the end of the year I added a Vegepod to keep the growing going in all weathers.

I’m sure the vegetable garden will keep expanding this year as I always have ideas. Fingers crossed we can move forward in the development of the patio area at the bottom of the garden. Levelling the paving slabs, wall repointing, a new greenhouse, maybe a potting shed….lots of exciting times ahead.