It begins - surveying what we have

The garden is very messy but we have fallen in love with it - this is why we have purchased this house - we can immediately see its potential.

Neither of us are gardeners, my parents love their gardening now although for most of my childhood their garden was a football pitch - that's what happens when you have 6 children - 4 of them boys.  

I think my passion for gardening stems from watching the wonderful Percy Thrower on Blue Peter in the 70's/80's - that private walled space that he created always intrigued me.  I think we all have that mentality that it would be awesome to discover your very own secret garden.

My partner originates from South Africa and remembers amazing flora and different exotic plants but was never really bothered about gardening.

Very overgrown with hideous life-draining Conifers.

Just to the left of the picture above is a huge Holly Tree, its branches almost touch the upstairs windows of the house and extend over our neighbours plastic-roofed conservatory. 

Below the Holly is a Rockery that has a large Hebe a couple of evergreen Azaleas and a large Rosemary plant.  

We have what appears to be a rotting Crab Apple in the middle of the lawn, the main trunk has fissures and is bleeding.

We have another unknown tree that has died and fallen into the waist-high grass further down the lawn.

There is a large Lilac Tree further down on the left and more messy Forsythia and brambles and a rickety old apple tree. 

There is a high wiry hedge that is much taller than me jutting out to the right but going nowhere.

We have a Rose in a big plastic terracotta-effect pot (see pic above).

Also we have an old bird table and some ornate lights.

There are 3 giant Conifers with multiple trunks along the left border.  These are taller than the height of the house.  The grass is dead and mossy as the tree roots have sucked out all of the moisture from the ground.

We have very limited light sources due to the height of the surrounding trees and shrubs - we have no real privacy as there is just a low wire fence between the two adjoining property gardens.

Hard to see the gardens potential

At the bottom of the garden past another row of 3 conifers is several meters of brambles and nettles that are at least 6 foot high - the Forsythia has taken over the space running parallel to our neighbours outbuilding.  There is a random small Ash tree down there too. 

There are 3 more trees towards the end of the garden that I can't identify due to the current season.

Rotting old Bird Table and ornate lighting. We'll have to replace those!

To the right hand side border is another Ash tree that leans at a precarious angle and a huge beautiful majestic old tree that my partners sister (who is a Park Ranger) has identified as a Goat Willow.   

A large and invasive Cherry Laurel hedge has taken over in our other adjoining neighbours house and is around 15 foot high and probably 10 foot wide.  It is encroaching right across a large section of our garden.