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Garden Maintenance
and Housework
From a patio to a jungle
We bought the house mainly because of the garden. It was supposed to be the same size inside as the one we rented when we first arrived in Sherborne, but that wasn’t the case. The garden however sold it to us, but we really did go from a patio to a jungle.
At 150 feet by 30 (approximately), it was far bigger than we could have hoped for, but with that came the prospect of a lot of work.
In the viewings we did of the house, we were thrilled by the fact that there were two greenhouses (one 8′ X 4′ and one about 10′ X 6′), a brick shed (about 10′ X 6′) and a ship-lap summerhouse (again about 10′ X 6′).
As you will see from the pictures, it was terribly overgrown and only the grass seemed to have been taken care of.
Front garden path 2001 cleaned
The front path originally had a large evergreen right in front of the front door
This will have to go
The front path
Summerhouse to house cleaned
The rear "extension" seemed fine until we had sliding doors put in.
 
We were informed that it was likely that the wall you can see, would at some point have collapsed
From the summerhouse to the back of the house
View from above cleaned
The garden was particularly overgrown and just seemed cluttered.
It really needed thinning out
View from the bedroom window
House to summerhouse cleaned
Once again, you can see that to get anywhere through this garden, you need a recently sharpened machete. The original owner's wife, did not (thankfully) come with the property
Outside the summerhouse, beside the pond
Original pond 3 - cleaned
This was so green, it was impossible to see anything below the surface, and looked thick enough to stand on...
The pond
pond green - cleaned
Looking at the pond, it was difficult to imagine that there was anything other than plant matter living in this little body of water, yet, there were reputed to be Koi carp...
Yeah, right
A second shot of the pond
The original greenhouse
This was the original greenhouse, or as I have literally just been reminded, the top one of two. The first one had to be dismantled fairly early on, but this one followed a couple of years later
The greenhouse - or one of two...
Lower third behind pond
Here's the bit just in front of the greenhouse from the last picture.
To the right is a bed with apples and a walnut tree, but it can't be seen other than from within it.
We were going to have to open that up...
The middle part of the garden
North side path
Although the hedge had been recently cut, nothing else had and it was very difficult to get up or down this narrow corridor