Our Garden – Hester’s Labour of Love
When we first arrived, the lawn was in pretty poor shape, having been the exercise yard for the previous owner’s Alsation dogs. Two re-turfs later, plus a couple of years in intensive care, it now looks like a proper lawn. What is more, thanks to Hester’s green fingers, the extra beds that she’s added – with their new trees, shrubs and flowers – make the garden a real sight for sore eyes.
As is the case with any gardening nut, Hester makes sure that the work is in a constant state of flux with new ideas replacing perfectly good predecessors. A couple of the more permanent additions however, are a crab-apple tree and a pair of raised beds for growing vegetables. The tree hasn’t produced any fruit yet but the raised beds have produced vegetables to match (well, almost) those from Hester’s mum’s old kitchen garden at Aldourie.
Work in progress includes drawing up plans for a water feature to replace the existing, rather feeble one that Buddha sits by. In the meantime, we’ve finally done something about the front garden, which had an attractive raised bed (with flowers, shrubs and a tree), a grotesque lawn and a crummy footpath. It has been replaced with gravel and paving, with a new mini-wall holding up the raised flower bed – see below left.
We also treated ourselves to a bit of luxury by way of a swing seat in the back garden. It was made for us by a man whose work was on display at Abingdon’s Autumn Craft Show.
