A brand new garden

All my adult life I've inherited scrubby gardens. And frankly I've never really thought to do much about it. I've been content to sunbathe on straw grass so scratchy it felt like lying on a bed of nails. Or I would recline on a deckchair saved from the civic recycling centre - posh term for the local dump - on a scorched patch of earth, rejoicing in my acquisition of a ground floor flat that gave me such unparalleled access to the Great Outdoors. Occasionally I would plant a random rose bush some relative would have given me, hopefully, as a housewarming gift. Invariably it would languish and eventually commit suicide, driven to it by the unforgiving and nutrient free earth into which I had dumped it. Lots of builders do a great trade in topsoil plundered from houses they have built and into which I move. Wherever that topsoil is, that's where the rose bushes grow. Me, I have lived a topsoil free existence. Until now. Until last year actually, when in the aftermath of my sister's death, my husband suggested to me that we do something we had talked about for years but never quite managed to prioritise - build our own garden.  Over the years I've become a keen vegetable gardener. The amazing thing about growing vegetables is how, by and large, most of them will defy my cackhanded efforts and grow and grow. The pride that I experience when I put homegrown potatoes or beans on my family table has to be right up there with the first time Neanderthal Man brought home his first deer head. Anyway. The more success I would have with my vegetable growing, the more disconsolate the state of my garden would make me feel. I would potter about outside, stopping to stare at my scrubby, patchy grass and sigh, or cast a look at my parched beds with lone, brave daffodils, and fantasise clumps and bushes of wild purple and blue. After my sister died, my husband and I wondered whether building our garden might help heal things. Since I had already discovered that a walk in the open air did amazing things for my outlook on life, the ability to cultivate things might take me that step further. So we went for it. Found a designer, who interviewed us so minutely on what we wanted that it felt almost personally invasive ("and what exactly do you plan to DO in your garden", she asks, pen poised over pad, and I am DYING  to say, we want to have lots of sex on our beach towels without the neighbours seeing - but I chicken out and mumble something about smelling nice flowers and cultivating herbs. What a missed opportunity). She disappears off for four weeks, then calls us, her voice bubbling with creative enthusiasm, to tell us she has The Plans. She brings them over that evening, we pore over them as she talks, and we begin to realise what we are in for. Her plans project swirls and twists and turns. They are a creative riot of texture, depth and height. We fall for it hook, line and sinker. We tender for the job. A bunch of distractingly good looking Aussie gardeners win it by a mile. They move in for two months. They gut my old, grungy garden, turning it into an interesting looking, dystopian wasteland. We survey it worriedly, wondering whether it might not have been a good idea to have lived with our scrubby lawn. At least we'd have had some green in our lives! They dig a hole. The hole becomes enormous. It's a yawning chasm. The kids scramble up and down it, covering themselves in icky mud. The gardeners install a pump. They take our trampoline down, a massive 12 ft thing. They place it over the hole.  They build up a beautiful slope next to the trampoline. They cover it with meadow grass, that flowers randomly. They put down a smaller circle of pristine grass at the back of the garden. They plant beautiful flowering trees and small clusters of shrubs, and pear trees and clematis and climbing roses. They put up new fences with proper wires and joists to hold and encoruage our climbing plants. They plant herbs. They create a swirling path of pebble stones. They put down a patio of recycled York stone and build contrasting steps of amber rock. They create wooden seating around our patio. While they are busy at their Christopher Wren of a garden design, I am propagating pea seeds and tomato seeds and kale and spring onions, hopping from one foot to the other. Finally they finish. And we have the most glorious cottage garden, transformed into the circles and swirls of our garden designer's plans. My pea plants go straight into my new veggie patch, bordered with rosemary and thyme. All right I know it's a cliche! But it works, I'm telling you! I go and sit on the wooden benches. And on the trampoline. And on the meadow slope. And on the patch of grass. It is glorious. It's beautiful. It is healing. And it's mine.