Turning a square piece of grass into my dream cottage garden 🌱

Welcome to this video and January is an amazing time if you want to plan in the garden. So the goal of this video, we are going back into the archives. I want to show you my cottage garden journey from the beginning to what it's looking like now. Well, currently in winter it ain't looking so fresh but I suppose that's the beauty of gardening. Everything dies back and you get a brand new canvas in springtime. Unlike room makeovers, there is no instant gratification. Well, sometimes if you tidy up a corner there is. Well, your garden is always changing, evolving, just like you as a person. So let's go back to the beginning and show you where I began. So I live in a semi-detached bungalow. I don't live in a quaint thatched roof Irish college. However, the style of gardening that I love is a romantic, whimsical, cottage garden style of gardening. So lots of flowering perennials, roses in the front. One big mistake I've made is not having enough structure but I'll get back to that. My garden was just a square rectangle patch of grass with a shed at the end. The shed was here when I moved in. I do get questions about people asking me where I got it from but it was here when I arrived. I'm in my home 10 years but I actually only did proper work in the garden around about the pandemic time. My gardening up until that point was cutting the grass and trying to keep some pots alive. I knew nothing about soil, watering. But I had so much joy when I was in the garden and I loved cutting the grass. It was my thing after work. Can of cider, cut the grass, gave me joy. I loved being outside. During the pandemic, I was made redundant. So I had more time in the garden because I started working from home. And that's when I decided to actually put some bones into the garden. So tidied up this shed. I invested and I bought a greenhouse. The greenhouse that I bought is from outdoorliving.ie. I get some questions about that as well. It's 8 foot by 8 foot and I have a 10 foot by 10 foot concrete base. All of the jobs in the garden are pretty much done by myself. Assembling raised beds, things like that. I did get my brothers to help me out with a gravel patch down the end. And I say a handful of times I've had my friends. Dad helped me. I do think I need to get help because sometimes, especially when you're busy at work, it can get overwhelming. And I've definitely had points in the past year where I have felt overwhelmed in the garden. However, the joy it gives me outweighs the overwhelm. To eat into this square patch of grass, I built four raised beds. They are 8 foot by 4 foot. And I do grow some vegetables, but the joy for me is growing cut flowers. And that is something that I absolutely loved last year. Making my own little bouquets, watching them grow, growing them from seedlings. I just love the colour. And something that I've been trying to do is have colour throughout the season. So lots of daffodils, tulips, even snowdrops and crocus in the grass in springtime. And then planting stuff to get me into early autumn. So even up to October, I had lots of dahlias, lots of sweet peas, lots of annuals that will keep me going until autumn time. So the garden only looks a bit crap from November, December, January. And then it starts to kick off again. Let's talk about growing zones. I didn't know growing zones were a thing until the comments section when people would ask me, hey, what's your growing zone? It seems very mild there. So Ireland, I had a Google. It's either zone 8 or zone 9. Although Ireland is small, there is variations in the weather. We are an island. So on the west coast of Ireland, it gets more rainfall. Obviously, that good old Atlantic breeze belts the Pearl Isles out. But any time there's a storm, it's always the west coast that gets whacked over. I'm on the east coast. It's a bit more sheltered. There's not as much rainfall compared to the west. And obviously, you've got north, south and variations in between. So where I am, I rarely ever get any snow. If I do get snow, it's a dusting for a day. Or every couple of years, we seem to get a bad one that might last a couple of days and stops the buses from running because Ireland comes to a standstill when there's a bit of severe weather. But that means if you are a regular viewer and you see me out gardening in March, even late February, the temperatures range anywhere from 0 to 10. March can be quite a mild month. It depends. Obviously, with the weather changing, I know last year there was some nice days, but then April was quite cold and there was lots of heavy rain. So Irish people, we love to talk about the weather because you can literally have five seasons in the one day. But one thing I will say is I think it's a great climate for growing. We always have lovely lush grass and there's never too harsh of a frost. So you can kind of grow where I am anyway. Obviously, if you're up in the mountains or if you're exposed in wind, you're going to have harsher conditions. But I feel like I'm tucked away in this lovely growing climate in my back garden. One of my biggest learns has also been about the microclimate that is in your own garden. And even when you look at your neighbour's garden, there might be plants growing better in theirs than it is in yours. So I kind of gardened backwards. I didn't know anything about the different soils and my lighting conditions. And also I have areas in my garden that gets way more wind compared to more sheltered areas. So I think gardening taught me not to compare to my neighbour's garden and to just work with what I have. So there might be a plant that grows really well in the front where it's sunnier and drier. So the likes of lavender, rosemary, herbs. And I had those poor lads in a sheltered, more damp spot in the back garden. So I think my biggest learn is you need to plant plants where they want to go, not where you want them to go. But the good thing is there's pretty much a plant for every place. So my best tip to any beginner gardener, maybe you enjoy being out and about but you want to layer on to your garden. Maybe there's a corner you want to dig up, turn it into a flowerbed or a meadow. One thing I love to do is just get a piece of paper and draw out some squiggles. See where you want to plant something. Draw out your flowerbeds and then identify the lighting. So you'll have to do this ideally throughout the course of the year. But winter's a good time because you're going to see where it's really, really dark in winter and make a note of that. And then come springtime when the clocks change, obviously the lighting levels will change as well so that area may become brighter. So you want to identify if a spot is shady, semi-shady, full sun. Ideally when they say full sun, I believe it's more than six hours a day for full sun. But you can double check that. Also keep an eye out for the wind. When there is a storm or it's particularly windy, is that a bit of a wind trap? The right-hand side of my garden and where the laneway is gets very windy. It's like a tunnel of wind. And then, also, that is not a sound effect in the background. A shower. As I'm doing this voiceover, there is rain pelting off the window. So it's not a sound effect I have randomly just added in. But something important that I never really did until I realised the plants were not happy in the locations they were grown was test the soil. So you can have acidic. There's different pHs. You can get a soil testing kit. And then you have the texture. You can have a heavy clay soil or you can have a sandy soil. So that will determine the type of plant that will be happy in that soil. So, for example, if you have really sandy, gritty soil and it's in a sunny position, then your Mediterranean plants are going to love that. You could do almost like a rockery theme. And then if you have like a damper area, so like the hydrangeas, they love water. Hydrangeas are a great plant in a cottage garden for structure as well. So they have a beautiful leaf on them and then you get this stunning flower and they pretty much flower all throughout the summertime. So if you have somewhere where it gets a bit more water, you've got a damper spot in the garden, they would like it there. And also, if you have areas that are full of heavy clay soil, you can condition this by mulching it. So I mulch every springtime. I use a fine bark mulch. I'm actually really excited to order my bag for this year. It makes, do you know what, it gives you a clean canvas. So you can mulch throughout the year, you can use grass clipping, you can use leaves. I like to use a fine bark and I do it around February, March time. And this just gives the soil, it gives it a nice clean look, but that breaks down into your existing soil and as you're digging and planting, it will condition and loosen up the soil. So if you do have heavy clay, you can mulch it every year. But if you don't want to follow the rules like me and learn the hard way, you can just pick a plant that you like, roughly look at the pot. The pot tells you everything, whether it likes sun, half sun, full sun, and then you can just stick it in. But try to just bear that in mind because then you're not going to have the garden backwards like me. I sometimes have to move around plants because I get the, like a common thing I did in the beginning was I would not check the height of something. So I would have a really tall plant in front of a tiny short plant. So little things like that, but I have to say you learn from those mistakes than me telling you. I can tell you what to do, but actually you learn when you get your hands dirty, you see what grows. And at the end of the day, planting is a bit guilt free. If a plant's not happy, try and get it before it dies and move it and then make it happy. And if it dies, it will just compost back into the soil, which is why I try and grow things from seed, because then it's more cost effective if you plan on killing some plants instead of going to the garden centre and spending a fortune. My next mistake is not planning structure. And by structure, I mean your shrubs, small trees. Your girl is a hardy perennial flower kind of person. I just want my garden to look like a scene from The Secret Garden, full of flowering plants. However, what I've learned is that you need to have some balance and you need to have a mix of some evergreen shrubs. And it's also so good for bugs, insects, nature. This year, one of the things I've noticed is year on year, I have increased the amount of bugs in my garden. So my garden used to be quite just sterile, as in it was just grass. I had, you know, the trees from the other side of the wall. So I always had wild birds visiting the garden. But since planting more and layering onto the garden, I have so many bugs and I don't use any pesticides. I do nothing. Last year, I did have some aphids on my dahlias and I left them. Now, I was chatting to someone at the RHS Flower Show, the Chelsea one, about, they were giving talks, you know, about natural pesticides and stuff. They did say, if you had aphids on your dahlias, to wipe them off with a tissue and squash them as you're doing it, because apparently it gives off a pheromone that will attract ladybugs. Now, I don't have the heart to do that. So I just leave everything. I do, if I find vine weevils, I did find some in a pot. I throw them over the wall. I'm not sure what you're supposed to do with them, but I just threw them over the wall and that is a wild public space. Above the wall, not my neighbours. If I notice any disease on a plant, I will cut it off and then burn that foliage and clean and disinfect the tools that I have used. But if I see lots of bugs, I generally leave them, because if you leave them long enough, nature will come up with a solution. So this year, I had way more ladybugs visit the garden. I had loads of hoverflies as well. I had birds nesting, so the robins had a nest. I didn't see the actual nest, but I saw the chicks. The chicks were dotting around. If you follow me on Instagram, you would have seen me sharing the chicks. The blackbird also had a brood as well, and there's always pigeons trying to do naughty things on the fence in the garden. So that's the one thing that gives me joy. No, I went off on a tangent there. I think I was talking about shrubs. So the green thumb is in my bloodline, you could say. So my dad, Lord Wrestem, was an amazing gardener, but he was more on the shrub end. He loved having evergreen shrubs and trees. He loved trimming and shaping and pruning shrubs in the garden, and the garden was always tidy and evergreen. I don't remember it being full of perennial flowers. There was the odd thing. There was a couple of roses, a few flowering shrubs, whereas I'm on the opposite end. I just wanted flowers, flowers, flowers, one after the other. I feel like if he was alive, he would say, girl, I think you need a few shrubs. So I have started to dot in some more structural plants. So the likes of the shrubby hydrangeas I have. I did move an Annabelle. I think she's starting to come back. Oh, hydrangea Annabelle. My regular viewers will know the hassle she has given me. I also planted a small variety of a magnolia tree. I have an apple tree in a pot. I have a tree in the front that I planted actually not too long after I moved in. It's about eight, nine years old. And I have two trees in pots that I need to find a home for that I got for free from Tree Week. And I also have an olive tree as well. So even though I have a small garden, I do try and have some trees, even some little ones. If you are trying to get more wildlife into your garden, shrubs and trees, that's how you'll get all the birds staying in. One thing I didn't realize years ago was I would feed the birds, but because my grass was this just open rectangle space, the birds prefer when they have places that they can shelter and dart around. So they can fly in, they can like get food or whatever. But now that I have more areas in the garden where they can hide and run around and dart about, I've noticed that I have way more wildlife in the garden this year and bugs. Now, speaking of bugs, I'm really excited because I've signed up to do a course. It's only a six-week one. It starts in February. So I have signed up, I've paid my deposit. I'm waiting to hear back from them, so I really hope it goes ahead because it's something that I'm really interested in and I want to learn more. I'll wait until February and I will fill you in and let you know how I'm getting on. So this has been my journey for the past, I suppose, two to three years in the garden. Every year I layer on, I learn something new. Something has to be prepared, possibly changed. Plants leave me, a.k.a. die. And new ones come in. Seedlings are sown. And a new chapter in the garden begins. Something I will say is your garden, I don't think your garden should ever be done. Yes, you can get landscapers in to get the bones in. But when it comes to your plants and your tastes changing and different things happening in the garden, the joy really is in the journey, as they say. I'm really looking forward to a new year in the garden. And you know what? It's been so nice looking back. So if you have photos on your phone, because if you were to look out my window right now, it is the greyest, rainiest Irish day. I definitely get a lower mood in the winter time. So it has been an absolute joy to look back at my achievements in the garden. Especially this year, seeing like I added more to the cuff flower garden. There was more colour, more bugs. Every year, it's like more life gets added to the garden. In springtime, I will start back with my garden videos. I normally upload these on a Sunday. I do have a playlist from this year, if you want to watch them. I think there's over 100 odd videos on the cottage garden playlist. So if you want, you can catch up on them. Please hit subscribe if you enjoyed it, if you enjoyed this video. And for my regular viewers, thank you for checking in weekly. I know that there is some people who just watch for the garden video. It's almost like a community in itself. And like I do say, I will show you how I garden. I'm never going to tell you how to garden. I can just share my journey and hopefully you find it inspirational. I'm not going to be as informative as the other garden videos on YouTube. Or if you watch Gardener's World, I'm not going to give you a load of information. I just share my journey and I love that you guys garden along with me too. Let's have the chats in the comments section. I'd love to know what was your garden win or lesson from this year. And what's something you want to do going forward in your garden. Thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next one.