After nearly a year without an update (the reason for which we will come on to), I thought now would be a good time. It’s approaching summer and we have been working in the garden, and although not much has changed in the house, our application for planning permission has been submitted to the council.

We have gone with our original idea of having a ‘one and two story’ extension, this expands the upstairs bathroom, the kitchen and the dining room.  We now just have our fingers crossed that permission is granted.

So with that in mind, we are trying to save as much money as possible, and we have mainly been making a few improvements to our front garden.

Pictured above: Our established ‘Loddon Blue’ Lavender and ‘Totally Tangerine’ Geums

On the last May bank holiday weekend, Paul and I went and bought nine different types of lavender to plant in the front garden. These now line the wall that runs parallel to our house. We’ve left space for them to grow so they do look a bit meek at the moment, but we’re looking forward to having a long row of fragrant shrubbery in years to come.

We have quite solid clay soil which makes digging more than a couple of inches very difficult. Coupled with the buried bricks, making space for the lavender was not as easy as we’d hoped.

Above: The variety of lavender now planted in the garden. 

The two french lavenders ‘Tiara’ and ‘Regal Splendour’ didn’t come with tags, as we had to go to an entirely different garden centre to find these. I intend to document the order in which they have been planted in a garden book so we don’t forget.

Earlier on in the year, in March we re-planted our hanging basket with a variety of succulents and an alpine lavender plant. The reason we went for those is because last year the plants tended to dry out very quickly and didn’t do well. It’s all doing much better and needs a lot less watering than last year’s arrangement.

We also replaced a the couple of plants that didn’t make it through the winter in our strawberry planter, it’s now bursting at the seams. Again, alpines and succulents seem to be the way forward for some easy gardening.

Above: The bees have been loving the abundance of chive flowers this year.

Our kitchen garden is doing well. We’ve removed most of the mint and had to re-plant it in spots where we don’t mind it taking over (on the ground below the raised bed). It’s now happily mingled with escaped strawberries, sweet woodruff and chamomile (and a few determined weeds). And we replaced a few of the things we lost over the years like sage and lemon verbena (which didn’t survive the Beast from the East last year).

We have also pulled out and replaced some of the plants near the top of the front garden.  I have tried to introduce some more colour as it was previously just a bland blanket of green.

From left: Hart’s Tongue Fern, Carex ‘Bronze Form’, Berberis ‘Thunbergii Orange Rocket’, a hosta (whose tag we lost), Heuchera ‘Marmalade’ & Tiarella ‘Spring Symphony’

We’re hoping it will all fill out a little bit and look even better next year, providing the slugs don’t eat them.

The plan is to begin work on our extension in 2020. The application was submitted to the local council by our architect in April and the decision was meant to be made on 6 June. We have yet to hear anything, but are hoping for some good news soon so we can start making some more concrete plans!