New house, new world, new garden

I haven't blogged since March!  That's terrible.  No excuse and every excuse:  packing and moving and getting out of the rental house and into the new one.  I probably could and should have blogged but I didn't so here I am now.  We are here.  We are in.  

The sitting room is calm and peaceful with our books on the shelves and our cushions on the chairs.

The view across the field is almost as lovely as the one up to the hills.

The amount of the glass still surprises me after so many years of our seventeenth century farmhouse, built for shelter, not for light.  I love the cladding too against the white render.  It feels like a house which belongs here even though it is yet to have a garden.

I have got to know the sheltered sunny places to take a cup of tea and dream about the garden we will create.

There are still things to do and in a couple of weeks the green roof will arrive for outside the guest bedroom and over the front porch.  This is something else we have never had before so reading and researching has been a learning process and I am keen to see how it will look and how much care it will need.

We absolutely love the house: the light and the space and the calm, quiet warmth.  We have been here for five months now (where did the time go?).  Boxes are unpacked, books are on shelves.  The kitchen works and is a joy to use with its big island, induction hob and granite worktops.

I have never had any of these things in a kitchen before and have never designed a kitchen absolutely from scratch.  Between us we mused and thought and drew up plans and it is just as lovely to work in as I had hoped.

From the kitchen it is open to the dining room, flooded with light from its large windows, sliding doors and roof light.  

I love it.  We love it.  We still come home to it with such pleasure and find ourselves smiling at each other with the joy of it.  Architecture matters.  Good architecture and great building feeds the soul.

We moved in before the landscaping outside was done so the summer has been spent watching the outside move from a building site to something waiting for a garden.

This was the outside in early June.

First the hard landscaping was done with paths and terraces and brick walls.

Ian put wires up along the back fence and plants began to go in.  This little bay tree had lived in a pot for about ten years.  I am hoping it will relish its freedom.

Most of the garden is down to shrubs, small trees and flowers but Ian built two raised beds and behind it here is the structure for an espalier apple and a pear.  It seems that if you have been growing productively for years it is hard to break the urge to grow your own food.

And slowly, slowly plants are beginning to go in.

I spent weeks and months thinking about this and even drew out a plan with the height and spread of all my shrubs in ten years carefully marked out to ensure everything had room to grow.  

Here is a section alongside the sitting room which you look out on from the dining room so you can see the idea.  It should not be a surprise that now that most things are in there remain acres of bare soil.  I have made a garden before but never on a completely bare site.  You have to hold your nerve I think.  It is November now and in the spring things will grow.  I have put in plants that were gifts from a neighbour and from family members and bought bulbs in quantity to fill some of the spaces while things become established.  I am going to use this blog to record what has happened and to watch things change.  How lovely after eighteen months or more in a rental house to have our own garden again and to be able to plant and dream.

There is not much to show you yet but here is Hydrangea Paniculata Limelight with Rosa Darcey Bussell.  The hydrangea has a white flower with a hint of lime green and the rose is a dark, dark red.  The soil here is rich and fertile and about as unlike the thin stony soil we gardened in our previous house as it is possible to be.  How will it be?  Will it become the oasis it is in my head?  How great to have the chance to see.