First off, let me just say I am not a keen gardener, in fact I actually hate gardening, but what I do like is admiring the finished article. You know when you´ve finished all the hard work.

Around our house we are lucky enough to have a front, side and back garden, the front and side are of average size, (about 30ft square, front and 50ft x 4 ft, side). These gardens are what my wife looks after and I look after the back garden.

You might say that we should both look after all the gardens together but we have very different tastes and looking after separate gardens does avoid lots of arguments.

The side and most of the front garden are mainly flowers and small shrubs with a small patch of grass in the centre, which my wife looks after meticulously. The back garden however is a large patio with a large lawned area (60ft x 30ft).

When we first moved in the gardens where a mess, the previous owners of our house where not big on gardening so the front garden was all grass and the back looked like a patch of rain forest. So my wife decided that she would like the front gardens as she said it had potential. I think she meant “I ain´t cutting all that grass in the back garden”

Now as I said before I am not big on gardening, so doing the back garden for me was a big headache. First thing was to get rid of all the bushes, weeds, and grass, well everything really. I hired one of the big industrial strimmers for the weekend and proceeded to make the back garden in to a wasteland. Filling a large skip in the process. So I now have a bare patchwork to start with.

Some of the garden has been dedicated to our patio, which took up 30m square, the rest of the garden has been sieved to remove all the little stones and bits of rocks from the garden then the rest was leveled and then a fresh lawn layed on top. This has taken nearly 18 months to sort out properly and thanks to Grant Bell of Place Landscape Projects for sorting it out!.

So, now I have a very nice lawned garden, which requires virtually no maintenance, whatsoever. All I have to do is cut the grass every few weeks and then sit back and enjoy. This is the part about gardening I enjoy. The looking at the garden after you´ve finished all your hard work.

Links
» BBC Gardening (Titchmarsh fest) - http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/
» Carry on Gardening - http://www.carryongardening.org.uk/
» Alan Titchmarsh.com - http://www.alantitchmarsh.com/index.asp

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