So we have been blessed with such gorgeous weather over the last few weeks, it’s been amazing hasn’t it? I don’t know about you, but for me it’s been too hot to get out in the garden.  We haven’t been out there for weeks, well it feels like it anyway.  Well apart from sitting (lying) out there and drinking copious amounts of tea (and eating ice cream!)

One small part of the front garden hasn’t really got a proper status yet. Originally it was pebbles but in our wisdom last year we decided it would look better with grass so that both sides of garden, either side of the front door, would look the same.  We worked really hard removing the stones, levelling the ground, digging in compost and topsoil, planting seeds, watering and nurturing the grass and watching it grow.  It didn’t look like the immaculately clipped croquet lawn we were hoping for though, in fact it didn’t really resemble a lawn at all, despite our hard work, it was more like a patch of unloved wasteland.  A real shame.  The hot summer just confirmed that it was crying out for some attention. I think that was what really made us decide to bite the bullet and do something about it. Seriously look at it…We weren’t really sure what to do for the best. Well as luck would have it, we visited the garden centre and as we were walking round we noticed they had a few things in the sale.  We saw one of those stone circle kits and it was half price, so quite honestly it would have been rude not to buy it.

So fast forward to this weekend when we spent a bit of time in the garden and what a perfect time to attempt to sort out this little bit of lawn-not-lawn.

To start with we strimmed the grass (raggedy weeds) and cut some weed matting to size.  We got the weed matting from Amazon and it was only about £8.  We, thats the ‘Royal we’ poured a few bags of sand over the weed matting and raked it over so it was flat and even.

The next thing that needed doing was laying down the actual stones.  For me, now it was starting to get a little bit more interesting. (Although it is completely necessary to do all the preparation and groundwork it’s a little bit boring!)

Aha see now it’s starting to look a bit better.  Actually Martin worked really hard at this because he had to lay each stone in the sand and then check it was completely flat by using a spirit level.  He had to add each stone in turn and level each one and then check that they were all flush with each other,

The next stage was to add the stones. We bought some pebbles as they were the colour and size that we wanted.

We realised that we hadn’t got enough stones so needed to go back to the shop and get some more, which bumped up the expense a bit. You don’t actually realise how many stones you need to properly cover a small area. We brushed over the pebbles to make sure they went in between the gaps properly and to try and make them as even as possible.

(The photo looks a bit weird, like the stones are spread uneven distances apart, but honestly they are all equal!

I’m really really happy with the finished result, it makes the front garden look a lot nicer, more cared for and tidy. Hopefully no weeds will grow through and it should be easy to maintain 🙂

We just needed to tidy the plants a bit around the borders and perhaps put some stones or chippings down to keep the moisture in and the weeds out.  I think that’s a job for another day…