#mygardenrightnow - progress in the middle garden

Ooh, look! It's me!

There's a garden bloggers meme running - for this weekend only! - hosted by Michelle at Veg Plotting blog.  Come join us and check out what other garden bloggers are up to this weekend!

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It might not look like much but progress was made in the middle garden yesterday. This is the little garden which I look out on from two floors up and which I started to clear last year.  I've been taking my time as there was a lot of ivy and other stuff that needed to be got rid of (mostly on the occasional day off work) but, finally, I'm redoing the layout.

As with all garden design, it was important to get this step completed first before I could introduce new plants but over the last year, I've acquired lots of plants for this space - some bought, some given, some adopted from my mother's garden.  These plants have been shuffled around the garden in their pots while I deal with one area or another but timing is now crucial.  Spring is here and these plants need to be in the ground, so the layout has to be finished. Yesterday's task was to level off the soil where I'd dug out weeds, bricks and tree roots, hack back some more ivy and clear under the Euonymus (spindle) hedge ready to chop it back more. All done by 6pm, just as the light was fast fading.

Luckily, when I got in, I spotted Michelle's weekend meme #mygardenrightnow; photos were needed so, at 8 am this morning, before taking my garden waste to recycling in the rain, I snapped a (rare) quick pic of me in the garden.

13 months ago - 7ft wide hedges and ivy creeping up to the tiny weed filled oval of gravel.

What a difference a year makes! This morning (when the sun briefly reappeared from behind rain clouds)
I'm still deciding whether to keep gravel in the centre or replace with grass or chippings.