Sarah41's Profile

Hello, I'm Sarah, I live in North Yorkshire by the sea... I am married to my husband Craig & have a 10 year old son... When we first moved into our house 13 years ago the garden was completely different it was a country cottage garden which was mainly a vegetable garden... Being young & keen to make the garden our own, we got rid of all the vegetable plots & started from scratch... I had visions of creating a tropical garden to remind me of fantastic gardens we had seen on holidays abroad... I read up on & did lots of research on how to create a tropical garden & the first year went out & bought 100's of pounds worth of the most Fantastic looking tropical plants, planted them then came the winter & killed off most of the plants... We then went back to the drawing board & did more research on plants that gave the effect of being tropical but were hardy to British winters... So we looked for hardy big leafy plants & set about creating my tropical hideaway where I could sit in my garden & think of happy holidays & imagine I was there... Shortly after we moved into our house & got married we had our son, unfortunately he was a very poorly baby & we spent the first half of his life in hospital... This is were my garden really got transformed literally with blood sweat & tears... On the nights I spent at home away from the hospital ward getting out into my garden was my time to focus all my energy & emotions into something creative... All the nights spent in my garden took my mind away from how poorly our son was.. So although it was a very bad time, I think if there wasn't so much emotions going on at the time my Arden wouldn't be the garden it is today... So I can honestly say blood sweat & tears created my garden... I spent hours digging out & widening borders, creating planting schemes, digging plants up & moving them around several times before I was happy... My tropical garden was then created... I had beautiful cordylines that soon grew into palm trees, banana plants, yuccas, cannas etc.. The garden looked amazing & you could literally of imagined you were anywhere in the world with a glass of red wine on a hot day... Then the severe winter of 2010 completely wiped out most of my plants, this was devastating.. I had to again rethink my planting scheme & went for grasses & hardy British plants that again still gave the effect of being tropical & this is the garden to date how it looks now....