Paradise Found!

all i can say is WOW. your garden is beautiful. all that hard work certainly paid off.

Mildred, your gardens have took my breath away, there Amazing and all that in such a short time, Love your Big stone animals, Hedgehog and i think i spotted a bird, WoW WoW and WoW again :) Looks like your hub is is a true romantic with his Fab Topiary and I would just like to say a Huge Welcome to GOY..Rushing to work but will be back this afternoon to have a closer look at your Pics.. Dee,,

It's an amazing accomplishment - just a beautiful garden. The raised and tiered garden beds look stunning, as does the courtyard and front border - so many fabulous plants.

OH MY GOODNESS...Im stunned, its amazing, how I dream of gardens like this, your hard work is really worth it

well done

x x x x

It is so beautiful, your hard work has really paid off. You should be immensly proud of your achievements. Lovely pics of a gorgeous garden!

Aw, thank you all very much for all your lovely comments! We have several animal chainsaw carvings, Dee - they look like hedgehogs but they are our guinea pigs! And a hen, a giant squirrel and a pig! We love them all!
I will add a photo of Squirrel Nutkin soon.
Thanks again, you have all made my day :)
Mildred x

Welcome, you have acheived an awful lot on your difficult plot, I know how hard it is coping with a sloping site. I realy like the use of the anvil and cartwheel.
Hopefully you are now at a stage where you can start to enjoy your efforts.
Your garden is fantastic.

What you have now is truly a delight to see,enjoyed reading about your garden and the photo,s are great,it must be lovely to wander around now and know the hard work is behind you,thanks for showing us.........

Ahhhhh there Carvings Mildred, They are Beautifull and i can see its a guinea pig now, I was rushing this morning :) Love your club house, can't quite make out what it says on the sign, Amazing gardens and looking forward to seeing more pics.. Dee..

Wow. you have put some hard work into your garden. It is beautiful. Well done. But...I can't see the bird that Young daisydee spotted..where is it Youngdaisydee?

Pic 4 Joanii, on the left..

wow - i am speechless - you must be so proud - thank you for bringing us into your garden

Thank you for showing us your wonderful garden. You should be very proud of your work.

Great Blog Mildred......and so interesting to see how it was no soooo long ago! You really have worked so hard and what an achievement...this wonderful series of gardens....:o) All the animals too and carvings as well...no wonder you love it so. Its stunning...........:o)

OMG!!!!! Gobsmacked.
(picks jaw up off floor).

It's wonderful.

Are you the hedgehog place in N. Lincs?

Déjà vu I seen some of these pictures before and I think they are just as breath taking as the first time...hummm Janey introduced you to the site...yep the owl and pussycat blog.

Welcome to GOY...expecting to learn a lot from you :)

Thank you again for your lovely comments!

Llew, we are a h'hog rescue in North Lincs, I think there is a bigger one near Louth though! We overwintered around 20 h'hogs this year, all released now. We have Pavlova, an older hog with injuries who will live with us forever, and looking in a couple of boxes in the garden, we seem to have a couple staying overnight (should that be over-day!). Then a tiny hog who will stay until she has put some weight on . . . it is fairly quiet at the moment!

I love Janey's name, the Owl and the Puss cottage! But as for learning a lot, Kmccue07, I don't think so - we just seem to 'bumble' along . . . . I hope to learn from this site! It is finding time to read everything that is the problem.

Welcome rain here today, are everyone's gardens really dry I wonder.

Mildred x

OMG what a acchivement ! Your garden is Fantastic & uv worked so hard :) So good to see you got what u wanted & worked so hard 4 :)

Wow, your garden looks wonderful.

I have just found this gardening site today. I am a garden novice who is on a budget. I love my garden - it's my stress buster. My only problem is I never know what I should get rid of, what I should keep and what would work best. Always wanted a real gardener to come and give me some much needed advice. Feel I have eventually found my gardener. I'm going home tonight to take some photos of my poor garden, will add them to my profile.

I don't think my garden will ever look like yours but any help and advice would be greatly appreciated.

I think it's lovely what you do. :o)

I used to be a carer for the elderly with learning disabilities and I regularly used to pile my residents into the mini bus and take them to Louth. They loved it there and I must admit, I did too. Another pretty place.

Keep up the good work, hun. :o)

Really lovely the place looks stunning

You must be so proud of you amazing garden. I think we all dream of owning something like you have created. Congratulations on a magnificent achievement and thank you for sharing it with us all.

really enjoyed yr blog on this, lovely garden. You've done particularly well with creating structure and some hard landscaping features - i find that difficult, not just costwise, but picturing them or having the idea in the first place.
I would also love to have h-hogs in the garden, but have never seen a single one in nearly 3 years out there ( and our garden looks like the kind of one they'd love, if you know what i mean) . I do know that expensive designer hog houses won't necessarily attract them and are not the way forward for us...
We live in Worcestershire. Do you recommend me getting in touch with a hog rescue team near here to see if they'd consider releasing any in our garden? Could I do that?
Thx in advance for any advice

well you bumble very well!!

Weeding, do you put food out for them, once they know you have something tasty out there word soon gets round! I use kitten kibble (and the Hills chicken one is a favourite!) and dried mealworms, peanuts too, cooked chicken, mash potatoes and a little bit of left over cake! It needs to go under something so the cats don't get it. Alongside a wall or fence helps as they tend to mooch along edges of things. Put water out too, they drink a lot! They need to be able to get into your garden, and out as well. As for accommodation, a wooden box with a 4" entrance does the job, cover it in roofing felt to make it waterproof and fill it with some hay, it doesn't matter what it looks like, ours are made from old pallet wood.

If you want to offer release facilities you would need some kind of box to pop the hh in, we place a run on the front for a few days and feed them in the run to get them used to living there. Once removed though many trundle off, some stay though! It is lovely to check the box and see them there in the morning.

There is a forum at www.hedgehoghelp.co.uk that is very good.

Thanks for everyone's comments, you are all lovely!!

Mildred x

Your garden is amazing, you have worked so hard but it looks really great, well done.

Lovely, lovely garden, and I'm so glad that you took 'before' photos. It just shows how much work has gone into it all!

Welcome to GOY from me.

Thanks Spritzhenry and Clarice! I love both your avatars!

Mildred x

enjoyed your garden so much I came back for another look and I'm still speechless :)

Aw thanks Angiedoherty!

And Weeding, I meant to add in my blog, we didn't spend much money at all! We were lucky/in the right place at the right time to get the sleepers for nothing! Just transporting them and 'lugging' them into place! We didn't actually buy many plants either, we brought some from our last garden, then maybe bought a few from the bargain shelf, we try to split things up when they get bigger as well! Ebay was handy for the box hedging plants, although we could have tried to grow our own from cuttings, I think I'd like to try that now. The big tree palm was a Birthday gift a while back. The carvings were BD gifts to each other too! I suppose the main expenses were the garden buildings and summerhouse. Last summer we bought a Quince Tree, it was reduced, and some fruit trees from Morrisons supermarket! Looking at the photos on this site I am tempted by many of the lovely plants! Mildred x

An amazing transformation and an inspiration to anyone starting a new garden - well done.

Where did the woodcarvings come from? I have two carved bears (from Derwentbay Bears in the Lake District) but their website appears to be offline at present

Hi Andrewr, thanks fornyour comments! The sculptures were from Mick Burns: www.chainsawsculpture.co.uk/
His work is amazing! The guinea pigs were based on 2 of our pets and he managed to really capture their characters perfectly.
Mildred x

superb garden! so glad you have joined GoY

stunning and so glad you like GoY. it is an inspirational garden well done

Amazing setting and a beatiful piece of work......love the box trees too.

I am completely bowled over by your achievements. Many, many thanks for sharing this. :-)

Thank you once more for all your lovely comments! We just need some nice weather to go outdoors and enjoy our gardens now! We've had strong winds and rain today (I am sure I saw a glimmer of sun in between though)!

Thanks again, Mildred x

morning Mildred
your garden is awesome.
the cortyard is my fav from these pics. but i NEED one of those wood sculptures in my garden...lol
looking forward to more pics.

Wow, what a transformation. Just goes to show, what a little imagination & elbow grease can do. Keep the pics coming!

Thank you Sandra and Regina for your lovely comments! I am just uploading some photos now and will add more when more plants are flowering, if we ever get some sunshine to bring them out!

Thanks again! Mildred x

The whole garden is fantastic, couldn't pick a 'best' bit. Well done! Big Mavis is wonderful too!!

Weclome to GoY Mildred :) The transformation of your garden is amazing and inspiring! Did you purchase the chainsaw sculptures or is that another of hubbies talents? Awesome blog, thanks for sharing it :)

Don't know how I missed this, I love before and after pics and your 'after' is amazing. You certainly have a lovely home. During a short family holiday in East Hagbourne, a village in Oxford a few years ago, I visited a small petting type zoo and there were gangs of guinea pigs running wild all over the place. They didn't really bother with people, they appeared feral, though they were obviously fed etc by the owner of the little zoo. Great to hear of your work with hedgehogs too:-)

Bornagain, just seeing your comment made me click into the blog and i've now just seen this beautiful garden for the first time too.
It's a gorgeous place :-)))))

Have you looked at Mildreds website ??
It's great !

Oh thank you so much, Louise1 and Bornagain! You are kind!

I don't have time to post here very often but I do follow some of the Blogs and enjoy looking at the photographs, I really enjoy reading about other peoples' gardens. And to dream of summer! It is at this time of year, when the ground is frozen solid and the plants are under snow and ice, that I wonder if it will all recover . . . . it does! And it is always a surprise!

Happy New Year everyone :)

Happy New Year to you too Mildred :-)))
Roll on spring.

And a happy new year from me too:-)) glad to be of service Louise:-)

:-)))

Fabulous garden, what a transformation, amazing, if you'r near Janey not far from me then.
Wonder if you're the same Lady who rescued a tiny little hedgehog from our garden many years ago, a really hot day and our young daughters found this tiny little thing in the middle of the garden just laying there, couldn't just leave him there, he was obviously too young to be away from his mum, and looked in a sorry state, so I phoned the vet who gave me the number of a hedgehog rescue place, a Lady came out and said he was so tiny didn't think he'd survive, but took him anyway, phoned me later to say after a visit to the vet, they'd found he had fly eggs in his eye but had managed to get them all out, then later in the autumn phoned to say he was the right weight to be set free and wanted to come and release him in the same spot he was found, lovely to see him scuttling off into the fields at the back of our house.

Hi Simbad, thanks! I do rescue Hedgehogs but I can't recall collecting your little one. My release policy is different too, I like to release where they came from and I would provide a box and offer advice about feeding etc. What a lovely story that his little life was saved! It is always good to hear a positive rescue :)