What a difference a year makes

I took this photo from the corner of the site almost a year ago today. We were five weeks into the build at that point and the tree surgeons had just taken down the massive cypress tree in the south west corner (you can see the remains in the foreground). At the time I was imagining what the site would eventually look like and here it is a year later:

Last week I took delivery of the trees for the site. I wanted to have as many native species as possible and I found an excellent nursery online at mailordertrees.co.uk. We used to drive past them when we lived in Cambridgeshire so I knew they produced good stuff and I was able to plant the trees within a couple of days of them being dug up at the other end.


Here's what they looked like when they arrived (note the sensitive way the courier treated the parcels, fortunately no trees were harmed during the taking of this picture). Unwrapping the boxes was a bit Laurel and Hardy as it was just me and a Stanley knife and the boxes were rather long and top-heavy but I got the hang of it. I had a lovely day planting them all in the sunshine to the accompaniment of the wonderful 6 Music on my headphones and apart from nearly falling in the pond with a tree whilst laughing at the antics of Radcliffe and Maconie things went remarkably well.

Spaced around the garden I now have two wild cherry trees, a Worcester Pearmain apple tree, a local damson (the Shropshire Prune, a name that never fails to make me smile), a crab apple, a mulberry, a hawthorn tree, a rowan tree and a hazel. Lots of folklore to play with there and they support plenty of insect species.

Out of sheer indulgence I also put in the beautiful White Stem Birch Tree (Betula 'Jacquemontii') next to the silver rehau inlet pipe. It's not much to speak of yet, as it's thinner than the cane it's tied to, but I thought it will complement the silver pipe nicely when its grows a bit.

So we are poised to enter the growing season now, all I need is the fencing to enclose the garden and the grass to get greener and it will start to feel more like home.