The Reality

It's all very well to imagine your perfect garden, but you have to work with what you've got. And that's when the troubles starts.

It was well apparent from the size and spread of the surrounding trees, particularly that sycamore at the back, that the garden would be very shady. It is also north-facing, or north-north-east at a push. The soil is heavy London Clay, and because we are on the hill, the whole garden is underpinned to stop it sliding away. This combination creates some interesting drainage issues. It also limits what can be planted with any hope of success.

The problems were most obviously apparent in the state of the lawn. It was mostly moss in the left hand quadrant, and had completely died off in the patches underneath the spread of the existing shrubs. On the right hand side, it was full of weeds, in particular the large nasty furry-leaved incredibly invasive things which grow all over this side of Forest Hill and seem to love woody environments.

So we had a short burst of enthusiasm soon after we moved in, during which we cleared the ivy from the fences, cut back the shrubs with a view to removing them, and killed off the worst of the weeds. After that, it was difficult to know how to proceed. It was, after all, around the end of January. We had no idea what might appear in the Spring, and in any case, there was no point planting anything until we'd worked where the sunny bits were going to be, which we couldn't do until the leaves came out on the trees. We decided to leave it for a bit and hope that at least the lawn would reassert itself.

It didn't.