In the beginning or Never give up

At the end of 2009 I bought a small but perfectly formed flat in south east London with a small but not yet perfectly formed garden.  The garden was dominated by a large and delapidated shed, a vast expanse of decking and a monotony of shale (it had presumably been designed as a low maintenance urban space but it was not a space I could imagine anyone wanting to sit in).  The garden had potential but that potential was well-hidden and would clearly take some unearthing.



In the beginning...

The shed had known better days.  Once the pride and joy of a former owner, it had been lovingly fitted out with workbenches, toolracks, electric lighting and shelves hosting an antiquated collection of rusty tools and half-used pots of paint.  Whilst the outside had little to commend it, inside it smelled of sunshine on wood, the warm, comfortable, musty smell of your Grandad's toolshed.  However, long neglected, the shed had aged and a large hole in the roof let in the rain where it was absorbed by the chipboard walls and collected in pools in the electric lighting.  Beyond repair, it was only a matter of time before the shed would be little more than a crumbly heap at the bottom of the garden.

The removal of the shed heralded the beginning of my gardening adventure.  It was start of a chain reaction that marked my transformation from novice windowbox grower to garden devotee with aspirations of self-sufficiency, ideas bigger than my garden, a willing slave to the sowing, planting and watering demands of the season. 

The garden's transformation has been more eventful.  The shed, a 70s relic, turned out to be built from asbestos.  I unfortunately did not discover this until I tried to take it down with the help of some (very good) friends.  Our enthusiasm for the task was terminally hampered by the sight of the little silver fibres glinting menacingly in the morning sun.  The shed had to be professionally removed and disposed of (at horrible expense) by men in white coats, face masks etc. 

Shed gone but still a lot of work to do

The removal of the shed created a space, but a space still filled with concrete posts, metal piping, shale and corrugated iron.  I wanted to create a garden.  However, at 5ft 2" and with only a bicycle for transport, the task of transforming my urban jungle into a verdant oasis at times seemed overwhelming.  Each weekend provided a new challenge as my small patch of London inched its way towards becoming a garden.  Some of the highs and lows of the developmental process included:

The hateful trolley

- pushing a trolley twice the length and three times the weight of a supermarket trolley and laden with 3m long wooden planks (for raised beds) the one kilometer home from the timber merchant.  The trolley had a mule-like will of its own and once set on its chosen trajectory, the combined weight of the trolley plus wood made it almost impossible to stop.  Lurching from pavement to road, it was a hazard to pedestrians and parked cars alike.  Once home, tearful, my arms spent, I unloaded the wood and had to push the hateful trolley the long kilometer back to the timber merchant;

- filling rubble sack after rubble sack after rubble sack with handful after handful after handful of shale (fifty-eight sacks in total);

- carrying a 3m x 1.5m sheet of plywood home from the timber merchant (the trolley was unavailable...).  A man stopped in his car and offered to help, an offer I think he regretted his offer when he realised how far I still had to go.  We struggled with it between us.  At the front door I struggled to hold back tears, overwhelmed by the unexpected kindness of strangers;

- a battle between my hacksaw and the television aerial.  The aerial was atop an 18 foot high metal mast positioned half way down the garden.  The bottom half of the mast had been thoughtfully painted green to blend in with the (non-existent) grass, whilst the top half was blue...  The colour scheme was, unsurprisingly, insufficient to disguise the fact that there was a 18 foot high metal mast in the middle of the garden.  On Easter Sunday, in a rash moment of determination to rid my garden of the final ties to its industrial past, I hacksawed down the mast's supporting structure (more metal piping) and, using my body weight as lever, pulled the mast down, narrowly missing the house.  Encouraged by my foolish success, I hacksawed up the mast and aerial, only afterwards pausing to question the likely risk of electrocution by television aerial.

I dug up concrete posts, refenced one side of the garden (replacing the existing fence which it transpired was also built from asbestos panels...), rotivated, raked, tilled and turfed, built raised beds and a greenhouse, glazed the greenhouse (never again) and carried innumerable bags of compost and manure from the garden centre to the garden in a rucksack on my bicycle.

And then it was summer.

And the garden blossomed and bore fruit (and vegetables) and I cooked for friends from whatever the garden offered and we sat outside and marvelled at how lucky we were to have our very own patch of earth in London.

June 2010