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Heya everyone, I'm not dead

I've been really busy turning my backyard from a dumping ground in to a garden *happy dance* we should be finished the worst of it this week. There is still some building work (rendering and painting) to do but all the digging, paving and planting is finished, we just have to finish filling the skip and get some slate dropped this week

The front garden was finished late last week, we kept it simple and very low maintenance...

http://www.cerevisi.net/photos/images/2009_photographs/vn_photography_board/2009_06_15-14.jpg


I have been reading and looking at all the lovely pics but I haven't had time to add my CnC.

Who has their comp entries in? I wanted to submit two but haven't had time to set up and work on my second shot, but I sent Nakal my "Playing with rainbows" photo today

 

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Nice to hear you're still alive :>


I've had to resort to finding a Norwegian photography forum, just to get my fix lately


Anyway, I've sent in my two pics for the contest, and I really hope many will participate this time around :] We've so many talented people on this board, so seeing how people here tackle the challange the contest provides is really fun to me. I've not participated earlyer, but I've always paid attention to it, and enjoyed it. Thats why I want more people to be a part of it

 

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Wait a minute. That doesn't look like a garden to me or is this a British vs American type of thing? What are you growing in that garden anyways? I grow tomoatoes and peppers in mine but this weather is nasty thins year.

I have heard of vegetable gardens and flower gardens but I honestly see neither there but I do love the landscaping you have.

 

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I think it's a UK v American thang...

A garden here is any outdoor space attached to your house that you own, it's occasionally called a yard (more likely if it's been concreted over), but more normally a garden. The front has the two maples you can see in the picture with some roses and bulb type flowers down the side, it used to be a jungle, I don't have any full on photos of how it used to look but this one is looking out over it towards the pub across the road, I didn't crouch down to take that photo, it was that over grown:

http://www.my-crap.com/gallery/?levelicture&id=1154

Edit: Found a full frontal

http://www.my-crap.com/gallery/thumbs/lrg-1197-100_1612.jpg

The back was even worse and was made worse by using it as a dumping ground while we renovated the house:

http://www.my-crap.com/gallery/?levelicture&id=1165

Edit: Here's one mid renovation

http://www.my-crap.com/gallery/thumbs/lrg-1177-100_1382.jpg

If anyone is interested in house renovation, it was an early 1900's Victorian terraced house. Loads of potential but really badly run down, the before and some during photos are here:

http://www.my-crap.com/gallery/?level=album&id=6

I really need to get some after pics up eventually. The inside is complete apart from some final touching up of the paintwork and treating the doors. The bathroom is still the original, it was the only room that was still usable when we bought it and was perfectly fine apart from some ugly tiles, so it's last on the list. It's been 2.5 years working on it though we were able to move in after the first 4 months, once the kitchen was put in.

It's been... interesting

The back garden has a lot more planting, but no lawn, I hate cutting grass and both my husband and daughter have bad hay fever so we decided to dispense with it. There will be more of the slate we used out front where the grass was in the back. It's not big like American houses and garden, living space is extremely expensive in the UK, you could probably get twice the house in the US for what we paid, but we love it, it has LOADS of character and we kept some of the original Victorian features

 

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Ahhh, when you say the back garden we would say the back yard which would be a landscaped plot of land with nicely cut grass normally but a back yard could be anything really.

So, when they say that the brits love to garden what exactly are they saying since a garden is just a yard? I always thought they like to flower garden and veggie garden when people say they like to garden.

Very confusing.

 

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Most British gardens are flower gardens with some lawn and people here can get incredibly anal about it.

From what I understand in the US you have a yard and in it you may have a flower garden, veggie garden, lawn etc? For us we have a garden and in it may be some flower beds, a vegetable plot and a lawn. If it doesn't have anything like that in it, then it's usually a yard. When I was a kid we had a garden and a yard. The yard was a large flagged (paved) area where my dad would tinker with cars or build yachts and the garden had alawn, flowers beds, veg and my swing, that was that my mothers area.

I wish I was a good gardener, sadly, I'm not. I'd love to have some fresh fruit, veg and herbs, but I'd just kill them. I have a few flowers that don't take any care and I can stretch to weeding when it's needed.

Because space is at such a premium here you will rarely find massive lawns that require a driven mower to cut, we have small spaces which we try to cram as much in to as possible.

It's funny that the term "yard" isn't used so much any more as it probably originated here. The rows upon rows of terraced houses in most of the towns and cities barely have a yard of space out back and that space was used only for an outhouse and somewhere for coal to be dumped. We're quite lucky to have a reasonably sized back yard compared to most terraced houses, enough to actually turn in to a landscaped garden. You certainly couldn't put a pool in it, and it barely fits my daughters trampoline, but it's big enough to sit in with a good number of friends and have a BBQ.

I'll post up photos when it's done

 

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That wasn't what I was expecting

Glad to see your ok Shal. I have been very lax on this board as of late as well. This is my busy time and I just haven't been here as much.
I haven't sent in pics yet, frankly I forgot about it. I think Nakal said we had till the end of June, so I'll have to try to get some.
Water is such a broad category, that like Raiz said, it should be alot of fun to see how people tackle it.

 

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Well, the only time I ever hear of a yard that is concreted over is when people are talking about a prison yard. Beyond that a yard is as you described for we over on this side of the ocean.

My yard where I live now would be a bout your size or maybe a tad smaller (I equate it to about the size of a yard in Queens, NY meaning it is extremely small). No riding lawn mowers here as I use a push mower but some still use a gas powered one but I am too much of a hippy for that (eco thing) and I love the exercise I get (main reason people use a power mower on their 90 feet by 12 feet yards) plus I have to mow twice as much as they do due to where I live on the plot.

 

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That is awesome taht you are getting things together the way you want em Shal. Pics I have looked at so far look good. Especially the front rock garden.

On a sidenote - I don't like it when people have lives :<

 

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