History
 These photos are aerial photos taken by developers who regularly hover over
South Buckinghamshire looking for likely spaces to build yet more houses!!
One thing it does show is that a garden evolves gradually to accommodate changing
lifestyles, interests and use. Instant Gardening it is not, thank goodness.
This first photo was taken in 1984, five years after we moved in.
The patio has just been started, the front lawn had been replaced with shrubs, and I had laid paving slabs across the bed so that the van could be parked away from the front windows but still in the drive. (In the second photo the vegetation obscures the path from the air, but it is still there! )
Further up the back garden I had just finished digging out the 'yellow' bed on the left after having filled in a huge rose bed that looked really awful and was right outside the living room windows, under what was becoming the patio.
The Red Oak (Quercus Rubra) hadn't been planted but the Mulberry was actually in a pot behind the greenhouse waiting to be put in.
The second photograph was taken in 1998 in late summer. The trees look as
if they are beginning to take the moisture from the lawn in places but it doesn't
look quite so arid from eye level and it is an area of lawn which has always
been the driest. I have edited out the white bits on the lawn which were the
remnants of an old rag that the dogs had thoughtfully scattered around my lawn
on the very afternoon the photographs were taken!
 Why the tent next door? The neighbours like to spend the summer in the garden in a tent all day, but that's the way they enjoy their garden. The other side is short term let so the garden never actually gets done and it has a barrier halfway down the lawn beyond which weeds and scrub grow unfettered by hoe and fork.
GARDENING BIT: The Mulberry is now in full leaf on the right, one of the last trees to get leaves and one of the first to lose them. The Quercus Rubra on the left of it is slowing getting bigger and I am trimming back the Mulberry to give the oak elbow room.
The Mulberry merges into the Silver Birch and the Apple tree but and hides the blue bed, but where you can see the golden yellow tip of the Stewartia is my red/crimson/purple bed, which is a semi circle across the garden.
Beyond that we have divided the vegetable area into four sections with paths forming a cross system. Hopefully you will not be able to see my sad lack of commitment in the vegetable growing department. I do have spasms of digging it up and planting but the ground elder in the top left hand bed has rather got me beaten for the moment.
On the left hand side of the garden is the yellow bed, with a Pyracantha that I am training as an arch, then above that a Rheingold conifer, the Acer Pseudoplatanus Brilliantissimum and then the hazel. The hazel attracts a lot of birds and we often get small trees and shrubs sprouting under the base in the spiring.
The Front Garden:
The front garden we dug up ages ago as I hated cutting grass that we never used and which was time consuming. We put in a turning circle or tarmac and then the lawn area was filled with evergreen and attractive-leafed shrubs etc.
The yellow rose around the front door is almost always decorated with fragrant yellow flowers most of the year, but was there when we moved in so I have no idea what it is called.
The Rhododendron in the middle of the bed is Doncaster but is being crowded out by the other shrubs to some extent.
The Pond:
 We first decided to dig out a small pond in 1988, we did it in a weekend,
the only setback being that the evening after the york stone had been laid
around the edge, we had a huge cloudburst which washed all the cement stuff
into the pond and we had to redo it! The water looked really pretty at this
point in time, it sparkled and moved but was not conducive to wildlife at this
stage. A heron would have spotted his laid out dinner from about three thousand
feet!
This does look rather bleak as it was newly put in and though we normally have
taste we did decide to use a pre formed outline as it WAS a small area. It now
brings a lot of wildlife into the garden, including hedgehogs, foxes, birds,
etc, etc. We have loads of tadpole and frogs but no newts... yet! The rocks we
did try to stratify as if in the soil naturally, but now look miles better as
the plants clamber over them.
 This
is the pond two years ago, the conifer (a cutting from one I bought earlier)
has formed a focal point, the Hostas and Astilbe have grown to provide cover
for the frogs. The pond though very tiny , has accommodated some small plants
which cover the starkness you get with a preformed outline. The pots which
contain my spare cuttings have taken over the area around the greenhouse
but luckily
you can't see the two hundred and fifty which lurk from where the photographer
(me!) stood.
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