A little bit of Heaven created from chaos

Before and after.....

The garden is quite small, south facing, divided into areas each with a distinct character of their own. The patio by the house is Mediterranean, with a herb bed, a potted olive tree, a blueberry bush and a Himalayan Honeysuckle, which makes a dreadful mess just outside the back door but is a favourite because the birds love its berries in the winter. The grassy square, insufficiently grand to be called a lawn, is dotted with daisies, the odd dandelion and wayward violets in the spring. One brick-edged flower bed is a cottage garden, full to bursting with foxgloves, stocks, cornflowers, Japanese anemones, forgetmenots and poppies under a pollarded willow, with a well-clipped daphne whose dense foliage hides a blackbird's nest.

Another bed has a carefully tended cloud tree called George, an arbelia, the only surviving plant from when Son#1 had a brief flirtation with gardening. (Sadly, no girlfriends have lasted as long.) George shelters experiments from garden shows or stately gardens, polite young plants that are given a home, usually temporary, to be admired and cossetted before being assimilated into the rest of the garden.

Leylandi have had much bad press lately, but the six trees crammed across the bottom of the garden are a great asset. They not only create a mini-woodland with primroses, periwinkles, lily-of-the-valley and violets, a lovely shady area with a gurgling fountain and sculptural tree stump, but a family of blue tits have taken up residence in a nesting box, collared doves and wood pigeons have nested in the upper branches, along with blackbirds, thrushes, dunnocks, robins, sparrows, even a little wren. A toad lives by the fountain and a family of mice have taken over the hedgehog house, so it's quite a lively area and a source of great interest to Cat.

A tiny courtyward area that was once a pile of rubble is now a beautiful oriental fantasy, with a rock garden, pebble stream, iron lanterns, a red acer under a 'Golden Showers' climbing rose, a few clumps of spikemoss and miniature bamboo, a variegated myrtle cloud tree and my collection of bonsai. I love this part of the garden most when it is lit by candles under a full moon.