We have plans, we have wonderful plans...

So to the back garden - we've spent the last year and a bit primarily sorting out the front of the house but recently our thoughts have turned to the massive headache of the other side.

Prior to the people that we bought the house from a couple spent nearly twenty years refurbishing the house and gardens. They were obviously gifted and passionate gardeners who spent years cultivating the ground, improving drainage and planting an array of beautiful and exotic plants that were well researched and carefully placed. their efforts were so spectacular that the garden was opened each year as part of the coveted National Garden Scheme and seems to have become a source of community pride. When we took on the house we inherited a photo album which documented their progress.

Unfortunately when they left the couple that took over did very little with the outside and the once beautiful beds have become horrifically overgrown (although the thick miles of brambles do lead to amazing blackberries).

It is here that we have a dilema. While we seem to have got to grips with the veg and fruit growing on the other side of the house we are the first to admit that we have no real interest or ability with gardening proper, we have no understanding of flowers, shrubs or perennials and very little enthusiasm for learning. The problem is that we do feel a massive sense of duty to restore the garden to at least a respectable level of its former (and well deserved) glory.

After much conversation we decided that the current number of beds (we are still finding them buried under piles of offensive growth) are simply too much for us to tackle between the veg, chickens, bees, furniture, kids and our business - plus we wouldn't be good at it anyway.

So we came up with the solution of removing many of the beds and restoring them to lawn but to make things a bit more interesting we'd add a smattering of trees - parkland style (and maybe a herd of deer?). In keeping with our 'if we do it we want something out of it' policy that seemes to have evolved elsewhere we further decided that they should be fruit trees.

So today an expedition up to Dingles Nursery near Welshpool resulted in eight new trees and a pile of fruit bushes (blueberry, blackcurrant and cranberry) to add to those we currently have elsewhere.

The trees are now in, mulched and placed where we hope they will flourish one or two are placed in areas a little wetter than is ideal but we've stuck apple and plum in such places as they apparently tend to do better than most in those conditions.

We now have a total of:

Two pear trees,

Four cherry trees

Seven Apple trees

Two plum trees

So in a year or two we'll hopefully need a new freezer to contain all the fruit crumbles!