Today was spent in and out of the garden dodging the heavy showers. The garden is overgrown and needs some TLC but has some lovely established plants including lilac, honeysuckle and Camellia. There are three very overgrown rock gardens that were in desperate need of work so we got started on the biggest of these.
Our plan is to spend the next couple of years breathing new life into the garden, creating wildlife havens whist still making sure that it is a garden we can enjoy as a family. The patio are needs a fence (to prevent Jack from falling off 
) and we are going to turn this area into a scented garden. It already has honeysuckle and we will add pots of lavender, herbs and wall flowers along with a couple of hanging baskets.
Going down to the second tier down will have a large rock garden, planted to attract butterflies and bees. The lawn will remain child friendly but the borders will be tidied up. We will create more room to plant bulbs and a greater variety of plants.
The bottom tier will see the biggest changes with a much larger pond being created during next winter (at the moment we have a baby-bath pond). We are also considering creating a boggy habitat as the ground is so wet at present and drainage is poor. We will wait and see what the warmer weather brings though as the ground may completely dry out and crack.
At the end of the day a single swallow was darting around overhead, our first sighting of the year 