The start of the story

Welcome to Madeira Cottage, an Edwardian garden with a semi-detached house included (I'm only half-joking, the garden was a major selling point for us). 

The house was built in 1906, and despite the odd shape of the garden (a square with a wedge stuck on!) it has always been that way rather than land bought/taken from other gardens later on. 

Originally, it likely backed on to a local park, designed as an Italianate garden for a large manor house that, save for the orangery, was never built. We discovered paths several inches under the lawn running across the garden, presumably from before the house was built as access from the roads into the parks.

I would so love to know what the garden looked like at first. If you know anything about the gardening habits of middle class Edwardian homeowners (wealthy enough to have a live in servant until the 1920s), I'd love to know more.

When we bought the house in 2019 it was marketed as the pride and joy of the previous owners. That means different things to different people, but it clearly hadn't been 'gardened' in a long time. There were numerous overgrown conifers shading out light, and sucking up water and nutrients like giant weeds. There was mossy grass, lots of woody, badly pruned shrubs, and a tiny brick patio behind the dining room. 

View from the old kitchen window before we started work

Spring 2022. The garden taking shape with most of the structural elements in place.

It might shock some people that we removed trees, 13 in total. 2 dead, 9 conifers, and 1 sycamore. At first I was reticent to do so, but in their place we have planted silver birch, rowan, white beam, crab apples, native mixed hedging, a fruiting hedge, a copper beech hedge and fruit trees in abundance. We have also created a small wild meadow area, as well as adding more and more flowers, grasses, shrubs and climbing plants. We left several mature hollies, an English walnut and fruit trees in place. 

I will try to add a plan at some point, to show which areas of the garden are which, and what is yet to be done.