Much exercised

WE’RE MUCH exercised, at the moment, with garden matters – as I mentioned in my last posting.

A designer chap has been round with some suggested plans, but frankly we don’t feel any of them really hits the spot.

Trouble is, we don’t quite know what we do want.

I suppose what we’d really love is for Alan Titchmarsh to ring the doorbell with a full set of plans and a team of willing helpers to transform the whole place while we luxuriate in some comfy hotel and not give the matter a second thought.

Failing this, however, we’ve had some serious head-scratching to do.

The various books and web sites on the subject we’ve looked at all agree that the first question to ask yourself is what you want to use the garden for.

And the truthful answer is, not very much. We just want a peaceful place we can sit out in on a warm, summer day where we can enjoy a nice cool drink and a game of dominoes. As much as possible the garden should be home to as varied a selection of wildlife as possible, while requiring as little attention from us as is practical.

A simple enough aspiration you would think? Not so, it seems.

Gardens left to their own devices tend to end up rather like our present one – overgrown and overrun with extraneous green matter to such an extent that we can’t even see the far end, let alone walk down to it.

There’s no such thing, it appears, as a completely labour-free garden.

We are reluctant to go down the all-concrete route to a solution, but what to do?

Like I say, we are much exercised…