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

The side path