week 1

Over the next 6 weeks I’m going to join in as a guest for the One Room Challenge. Basically, over the course of 6 weeks, participants share the progress of their space, broken down into weekly blog updates, for a final reveal on May.11th.

This was a last minute decision for me to join so I’ll be sharing progress on a backyard project I’d already been planning to do. My plan does include plants so I may have to do another reveal later in the summer once things have filled in and leafed out.

This was our yard when we first moved in, during summer 2014. The backyard shares fences with 6 other neighbours and there was not one single plant or tree here even though the house was nearly 20 years old.

At least one good thing about this was that I could choose whatever I wanted to plant. Below is the garden in August last summer (2016). There is no privacy in our yard so my focus was on getting all of the plants growing first before thinking about building a deck or putting in a patio.

I’m a new gardener and absolutely love planning what to put in the garden and seeing it grow. Along the fence by the back last year I turned this empty space into a spot where herbs, swiss chard and kale thrived. It wasn’t the prettiest setup but it added a lot of salad greens and was a good spot for vegetables that grow in the shade.

My plan this year is to build a long and narrow planter box along the edge of the fence where I can plant vegetables and have vines growing up trellises to create a green screen.

In the winter when all of the leaves are gone, the black trellis and black planters will be more interesting to look at than the plain fence. I would really love to stain the whole fence dark grey but right now I’m not prepared to talk to all 6 neighbours who share to the fence to ask if they’re okay with that.