Prequel

signature photo

Me looking a bit 'Good Life' The 4 fir trees in the garden had been there for 20 years or so and were gradually taking over. We also had another 3 trees growing against the wall of the house which squirrels were using as their personal stairway into our attic. When all neighbours had finally all agreed these could be chopped down we did the deed and found there was a massive garden hiding beneath them.

The catalyst was my meeting Richard Reynolds on a ‘Play’ course at the School of Life in London. He took us out to guerilla-garden a small patch of dirt in Bloomsbury, explaining that if there was a patch of unloved dirt anywhere it was fair game and the owners would either not care since they didn’t use it anyway, or be delighted that someone was making an effort with it. When I got home that night I realised that this described the newly excavated front garden of my house – we live on the top floor and the garden is actually owned by the basement but with huge amounts of help from Andy we’ve been turning the massive but overgrown weed patch into an outside space that we can spend the summer in.

The 4 fir trees at the front spilling over onto the pavement:

All seven trees from the side, not much garden left:

The trees

And this is what was hidden behind the trees (you can match up the neighbour’s hedge on the left, the top of our roof and the road sign on the right):

After the trees

Everybody stops to chat about the sunflowers, today I was told that they were “the talk of the neighbourhood”. The tallest must be about 9′ tall with 3 flower heads and there were 33 flowers at the last count mid-August:

Sunflowers