Following on from our house tour video on YouTube, the Covid-19 lock-down months of March to June has seen us reconfigure our plans slightly.
Our daughter, Luna, turned 2 years old during this time and her energetic nature had us worrying about our garden’s safety! It sounds silly but we didn’t quite realise how unsafe the back garden was until our daughter started running about it regularly.
The garden was a great way to catch a breath during lock-down. Living with a 2-year-old inside 4 walls, 24/7 can become quite intense.
What were the aspects that bothered us into acting before doing our pre-made house improvements?
Openness to the street. There was a lack of privacy and a danger of Luna running right onto the street. We also didn’t like the ease of access for strangers to enter.
The back garden had so many levels to it which is ideal for the wee climber that she is but it was not very safe if she was to fall or trip!
The back garden was unsightly and there were far too many things going on visually. We felt that all previous works were not done to a great finish and used too much concrete!
The clothes poles were massive, taking up a large part of garden, eye line and another threat to Luna running around.
We wanted the large side garden to tie in with the back garden better, allowing more room for Luna to play and it would allow us to show off the large plot of land for what it is rather than being cluttered and bitty.
Ultimately, we wanted the garden to look in keeping with the new style of house we are going to create.
Here are some more before images to show you what we were dealing with...
This overhead shot (bit of window glare, sorry) not only shows a dry day in Eaglesham but it gives you an idea of the grass space, the massive clothes poles and gives a clear example of the openness to the road where Luna could just run out!
Not very pleasing to the eye, the driveway seems to have been a DIY job by one of the previous owners. Again, lots of potential danger for Luna here as you can see. Furthermore, look at the red fence on the left which doesn’t go with the colour of the building, the white of the clothes poles or white and grey of the garden decorations.
Somehow before we started the project we missed the tree stump that this plant pot is sitting on. When we did find it, we did not reckon it would hinder the job quite so much as it did! Further blog posts will detail how we dealt with it.
This angle shows the driveway leading into the side garden space. You can see the shed on the right which tended to distort the eyeline as it was a large shed and very imposing. Our idea was to give Luna more playroom by taking away the various elements here and trying to form one continuous garden space. You can also see the red fence again which from this view you can see is very open to the public walking past.
These two angles show you the unsightly nature but more importantly look at the potential for Luna hurting herself when climbing or running!
This image shows the level between grass area and the back doorstep. This is not ideal and we decided decking would be a good idea to bridge the height gap, with only one 150mm step in between the back door and the grass.
Outfit for every time Luna goes out in the garden?
Not very practical… so Lorna drew up plans to transform the back garden into a more secure, private and play friendly environment for the wee one. Not only that but she went about making an area us adults would like to spend our spare time in too!
Plans for the new garden layout
As you can see there will be still be levels to the garden but in a much more calculated way with the rises reduced.
The shed will be removed and replaced later with a smaller storage unit. The driveway will maintain the level of the grass area and the fencing will be 1.5m. We have come up with a way to save money on this part of the job, we will cover this in a future blog post.
Lorna has put in seating areas on both the driveway and outside the backdoor, this is up for discussion come the time the decking an driveway are in place. We are also looking to park our car in the driveway when not being used for family and friend gatherings so we will look to implement a bi-fold gate where the fence covers the current driveway opening in this drawing.
We like the idea of growing our own vegetation and we have included a patch of land to do just that.
The colour schemes are still to be decided too, we just wanted to make ourselves aware of the layout at this stage.
The lack of clothes poles will mean more area to run around and plus the side garden will feel like a continuous part of the area.
Budget
We plan to do most of the work ourselves. Neil’s dad Norrie has offered to help us with his building experience which will keep costs down dramatically. The 3ds Lorna made helped us and Norrie to visualise the space and ensure we were all on the same page in terms of the design and stood as a good basis to help us decide on finishes and phasing the works.
This being said, not having any real experience of landscaping a garden, we set ourselves a very ambitious budget of £5,000.
We will let you know how we fared and give you an idea of the material and labour we needed to pay for in a future blog post.
next blog post…
As we have started the project, we are able to follow up this blog post quite quickly so it is my intention to post another update next week. You will be able to see how we started the project, what challenges sprung up and we will give you an idea of the suppliers we chose to use.
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