As my wife is concentrating on the building I am more the gardening "specialist" *cough*
So I've started with the garden. My dad, my grandfather and my uncles - welll, basically everyone in my family on my father's side were having a vegetable garden so I kinda grew up on that and as a teen I said I would never-ever-never have a garden of my own. Not floral, not vegetable, not anything. I would only want a patio with pots and plants and that would be it.
Well, I saw that garden and at first I had that patio/pots & plants thing in mind but then I saw all those big stones and how poorly everything looked......my hands started itching.....
I started with the first plants border,.....empty it out
.....like my dad would with just a spade......
I decided to move the rhododendron in the patch for the time being.....
.......so I could create a good size border with all those stones. And mind you, this is just half way finished. The chair is an old wooden chair wich I will give to some Hedera's. I will sandpaper it, soak it and plant some Hedera's and species of moss there. Don't know I'll shape it but it will probably be with the help of some old branches left by the oak-tree in the centre.
It is forest soil and the previous owners didn't really tend to it I think so after this I will be digging the earth up - I won't remove it because of all the critters & crawlers in there but I will mix it with composted garden soil and some soil specially for potted plants, that has some extra compost in there for the places where some of the plants will be.
It's mainly going to be a rock garden wich is new to me but not all of it.
I've noticed in the environment that crawlers (ground covering plants), moss and ferns do well there. But there are plenty crawlers that carry bloom and we have alot of plants that like half-shade so I'm busy for a while here since this is just one patch......pffff