It’s one thing playing around with the floor plan of the house and imagining all sorts of things – but these things will cost money.
Playing around with plans and dreams for the garden, though, seems much more realistic – because most of it won’t cost me much more than a sore back and perhaps a few blisters!
I want water in the garden. Something akin to The Puddles in the old Flâneur Garden, but perhaps on a slightly larger scale, considering that I have so much space. Nothing too fancy or formal, but just a small nature habitat. Well, perhaps a more formal-looking small pond near the house and then a narrow stream/trickle down to something more casual further down the garden?
I also want an orchard. There are fruit trees in the garden already, but not enough! And not the specific sorts I want… I want a particular sort of sour cherries, two specific sorts of apples and two specific sorts of plums. And pears and nuts and soft fruits and all kinds of wonderful things. Basically I want to be able to fill my larder with juices and preserves and other lovely things…
The orchard will cost, though. Trees are not cheap, and since I have very specific requirements I can’t just go by what’s on sale… I sense some very specific Christmas and birthday wishes coming along!
The vegetable garden will be quite cheap. Seeds don’t cost much, and at least the first year I’ll just focus on simple and common varieties. Peas, beans, potatoes – probably some radishes and some spinach for an early crop and some kale for a late crop. And of course a row of marigolds, because my grandmother always had marigolds in her vegetable garden, and apart from attracting pollinators they really do taste rather nice in salads or teas. And look wonderful on any breakfast table!
As for the flower beds I think I need something to balance out the HUGE bed of fuchsias. Perhaps I need to ensure I always have yellow-to-orange dahlias to plant opposite them, or perhaps I should just be lazy and sow rudbeckias… I don’t like fuchsias, really, but A) they are part of the garden and B) any plant looks great when massed and C) they were planted by the current owner Poul’s late wife so they have a story attached to them. I might one day move them but I will never get rid of them!
So many plans and hopes and dreams… First, though, I’ll have to fix the house interior. I need a nice base to go into the garden from.
I am loving your dreams….I absolutely had to have a pond in my garden and so glad I did….and the orchard sounds wonderful!
I basically want everything I had in the old garden, just MORE! After all, now I’ll be making all the decisions myself, so I might as well dream big.
Over 25 years, I did manage to bring most of my house dreams to fruition — including a deck on the back, a kitchen remodel, and a major new addition on the front — but they were expensive and they involve stressful dealings with contractors. What I love about garden dreams is that, as you say, they are much less expensive and I can do the work myself. I love all your visions for your new garden; it will be very satisfying to start making it happen in the year to come!
I’ll need to get somebody in to replace the roof and the electricity control panel, but apart from that I can do most of the rest myself with minimal use of plumbers and electricians if I end up moving walls around. At first, though, it’ll mainly be painting and replacing the floor treatments, which is fairly straightforward DIY stuff.
Materials are not free, though, whereas it is limited how much money I would spend on the garden. It has some nice backbones, so in the beginning it will be a matter of shifting things around a bit to create space for the things I want to install – like some water and a small orchard.