The weather was brilliant today compared to the horrid rain of new years day.  I ventured out and did a bit in the garden to work off the load of tia maria and after eights I had over christmas. I did a good bit of tidying up, cutting back, forked over the beds and carefully with a hand trowel put back the spring bulbs I accidently disturbed. The third attempt at a compost heap was filled to the brim with stuff at the end and the second one is looking well rotten.

With the clean up, I can now see what space I really have in the garden and can plan what to put in the forthcoming year. This will save me a good bit of time and energy come spring. It’s been over four years since moving into this house and in that time I’ve sorted out ten year’s previous neglect in the garden, found beds and paths that I didn’t think existed and mainly been growing veg, herbs and salad. The garden is like a blank canvas now and I am now going to take the plunge of designing a garden that combines flowers and edibles as before I just made it up and put stuff in as I went along. It is time to make a start!

It’s okay for the make-over shows and TV personalities to show what you can do to improve your garden with a nice old budget but what if you haven’t got much to spend on it and you haven’t a team of builder “geezers” to help you out?

I’ll  be trawling the skips, small ads, e-bay, gumtree and freecycle and be on the look out for cheaper ways of getting the plants and materials (I mean I’d love railway sleepers as part of a raised bed but I can’t afford them).

The big jump of designing a garden combining flowers with veg will be a bit of a challenge, but it will be good experience as I’ll be constantly learning, something that is brilliant about gardening. I have to keep telling myself to approach one problem at a time as if I thought about all that I have to do, I’d probably give up!

Happy 2012 to all!