Confessions of a novice gardener!

A few years ago, when we moved into our current house, I had the inspired idea (hah!) to create a Japanese garden in one part of our garden. The plan included a small tea house for me to use as my treatment room to provide reiki and reflexology to willing victims!

In my mind, I naively thought that this would take but a few weeks to do - two and a half years later it is still under construction! This is the tale of the progress - and lack of, of the garden!

The plot for the Japanese Garden is about 26' x 45', facing more or less north/south and on a slope. It was covered in spirea, bramble, heather, bramble, privet, bramble, large unkown straggly bushes (spot the knowledge, eh!), more bramble....etc. it took 3 of us 10 woman days to clear it - I really should have known at that point that my simple plan was perhaps not quite so simple after all!

The plot is cleared - except for one particularly stubborn privet tree - had to resort to man power to dig that out. Thanks to my husband,Andy, for that!

My initial pond and tea house plan - the outermost planks are the veranda.

Me hard at work doing the final digging on the top pond.

We enlisted help from the local rabble (our best friends, Jackie and Chris and their assorted offspring) to get the HUGE pond liner in place.

As the pond filled, it quickly attracted wildlife!

The pond as it was early last summer.