Hello from Rainy essex! Here is the story of my intro to gardening, i'll keep it short as possible!
We (me,hubby +4 sprogs) moved to our first house in October, we have previosly lived in flats with zero outside space so are total newbies to all this greenfingered malarky.
The house perfect, total overhaul before we came so fab, the garden however was a different story, can tell it was once loved many years ago but not for a loooong time, everything was overgrown, broken glass, nails other household items buried in the ground, cat poo..CAT POO GRRRR never did i think i would dedicate hours to picking up the stuff! So anyway, we're on a very tight budget, hubby works all kinds of crazy shifts and we have 4 kids age 3-14 to entertain. we price up getting the professionals in...not a chance in hell unless we dont want to eat for the next year haha! the first few weeks i bought myself a bargain lopper and a fork £6 each (these were the only tools we used until the point of hubby pulling up hedge roots) chopped down "a few trees", many blistered hands later and we could finally see how much room we actually had! hubby got a bonus, we decided to turf (intended on seeding to keep cost down) price to get it supplid & laid £750...price of turf plus delivery £200...we chose the later and decided to diy it. watched many youtube vids and google was definitely our friend but i think we done an ok job..ok its not the most level of gardens but itll do us!
So after the nightmare of cleaning it all up I decided I wanted everything in pots, no more weeding, no acres of roots to pull. Im not really into flowers much, I love lillies so have a couple but really my main interest is growing fruits and veg, I have bought a few ready grown from shops and grown some from seeds in my tiny greenhouse, so far all seems to be going well (i think) although I am sure I will need some tips and advice in the future hence signing up for this site! please take a look at my pics (more in albums) I hope to be chatting to some like minded people soon, Thanks for reading!
