Creation of a garden: New patio and building a shed
THIS week I am continuing my story of how my garden has developed.
The pictures we can see here were all taken between March and May 2017.
As readers who have been following my narrative will now know, I had some success with the first crops, which not only brought me a great deal of satisfaction. It also provided fresh vegetables for the table and, so my wife said, reduced the food bill, which to her was excellent news; nothing gives her greater pleasure than keeping the supermarket food bill down!
However, there was much to do.
My thoughts turned to my next project. Well, what do all decent gardeners need? You guessed it, a shed.
Now some people might think of a shed as somewhere to keep stuff that you can’t fit in your garage or your loft.
Not so, to us gardeners, this is a place to cherish, to sit outside, looking fondly on your garden while having a beer in the late evening sunshine while you listen to the evening bird song. A place to sit with satisfaction, to contemplate and plan your next project. And, eventually, this is what I would do.
But before I could achieve this perfect vision, I had to get a shed and find somewhere to put it.
Ok, I thought, let’s sort the position first. I had an area of my garden that was probably not going to be transformed into anything useful.
So, I thought, why not have it tiled and put my shed on it. The first picture is the area I am referring to and taken before we moved in. It shows the bit I wanted to change. In the following picture, on another rainy day, we can see the builder laying the base for the shed and then the new patio nearly finished. still
In the background, we can see the base for the shed. There were two problems with the base (a) it was too small (b) I had forgotten I would need a path to it! And this was a must, if I didn’t, I would end up with mud clinging boots and an upset wife as I trailed dirt into the house, plus much more importantly, I would have nowhere to sit to drink my beer!
So, I fixed that. We had the builder back, he enlarged the base, and one of his contractors build me a path.
Next was where to source a proper wooden shed. I had visited the local DIY places, Leroy Merlin, BigMat and others but not seen anything I thought suitable.
The answer was the local carpenters, FustaBarx, the brothers Julian Donet David and Sabador Donet David, had done all the carpentry work in the construction of my house, so they were a natural choice.
With the help of my good friend Paul Singh, we commissioned them to build the shed. And we can see them here erecting it and the finished article. Sadly, Paul passed away in February this year. He was a great help to my wife and I when we first moved to Spain, and his advice was invaluable, so I am dedicating this article to his memory.
I had still been hard at work on the garden before we had the shed erected. I created a new drainage channel, which has been pretty effective over the last three years.
We can also see two chairs on the shed base – just getting ready for my evening contemplation and a few beers! (Beer features heavily in my gardening activities, especially as the early evening approaches). I had also manured the plot ready for planting and had bought a compost bin, a musthave item for any self-respecting gardener.
Next Time – Let’s talk about lawns.