Garden

At the back of our semi-detached house in Ossett there is a strange shaped garden that goes straight out from the back door and then plunges down a hillside and to the left, so that the bottom of the garden is about 10-15 metres down and below the house two doors along. The whole thing is roughly 70 metres long.

While it is all wildlife friendly and productive, it gets wilder as you go down. It has been slowly evolving over the years and is now a source of much pleasure, as well as a lot of hard work. The images above and below sum up the garden – a space crammed with productive and visually interesting plants and objects, with a hint of adventure beyond. The arch and owl below were made with wood from the garden.

The Garden Shape. Left of of the red line slopes down in the direction of the arrow and to the point
A rough idea of garden paths, mostly grass, woodchip or steps
A view from the red line across the garden

Ruth has always had an eye on garden design and her sister has been a professional garden designer. When Ruth first saw this neglected garden she knew it was her opportunity to fulfil a long held desire. She and her sister sketched out a plan. Ruth got a local garden designer to flesh it out and then she took the first step of getting someone in to clear the sycamores off the hillside and build a set of steps down to a raised platform and then on to a pond. The skeleton of a design.

All down to the left side of the garden on the aerial pictures above is a woodland belonging to the local school. The trees are getting much bigger now and parts of the view are disappearing. We don’t mind that, as we love trees and have planted lot’s of our own to add height and protect from the wind. Sadly the neighbours don’t always agree, though the rest of the world is slowly beginning to realise that trees can’t always be somewhere else.

The garden not long after I came to live here. I built the shed as a base to work from.
The garden more recently. Slowly planting has developed and lawn has receded.

I arrived here a few years after Ruth and started to help develop the dream and to add my own touches. I’ve gardened all my life and introduced access paths, vegetable gardening, landscaping skills, structures and sculptures. It has already changed since these pictures.

The images below give highlights and more detail on other pages

Front Garden
The patio deck in snow
Late sun on a middle bed
The original platform, redecked, roofed and the last sycamore turned into a sculpture. It’s been redubbed the Far Pavilion.
Later the same year, new sculptures made
View as you enter the back garden
A set of side steps joining paths
Time for a coffee
A productive greenhouse
Rails from our trees and a gerbera pot
Marigolds galore for pollinators
Continous two loop mobius.
One of the mobius sculptures in a bed behind a meadow bed
The lawn regularly gets smaller and new paths appear
A view back towards the house
Self seeding poppy
An early view across the garden in snow
The former shunting yards below the garden get smaller and wilder all the time
The central steps down the hill garden
Looking back up at the platform down the garden before rebuild.
Sycamore Owl when new
Lockdown Mist
Mobius Maquette
The first mobius maquette that has stayed in the garden.
Acers and Roses
Border bed
Unkempt but beautiful beds in the garden
Ever Evolving Vegetable Beds
Logs cut from the garden
Borrowed Landscape
Autumn Colour
Chopping wood and making chairs

Latest Posts

  • A Good Garden Day
    13/04/26 Pleasant weather after a cold start. Ruth, Simon and I all pottering. Some sluggish bees about and everything changing fast. Between us we created a log pile from the defunct arch, mended a boundary fence, potted seedlings trimmed back a willow arch, cleared beds of weeds and mulched more tender plants, Cleared the debris from an earlier pond clearance and put it in the dead hedge…….
  • Nest Box – Finally
    It is nearly 20 years since I moved into this house and there were old, unused, nest boxes here then. Those were put up by Ruth who arrived here 10 years earlier. Despite that we’ve put up several since. One was hidden in a conifer about 20m away from where I film with an old Fairphone 3 but just about visible from that angle. Then wood pigeons nested… Read more: Nest Box – Finally