Another Garden Project - The Side Return

After completing the patio in our garden earlier this year, OH had one more garden project that he wanted to complete by the end of the year. This was to tidy up the side return that runs alongside our kitchen windows. It is into this space on his side, that our neighbour has built onto his property this year and with that project coming close to completion and him having donated some York stone slabs to us from his side return paving that he no longer needed, OH decided to start work on laying the slabs and making this long neglected area more presentable. It is probably the last major job we need to do in our garden.

Here's a picture of the side return taken quite a while ago before the building work started next door:  

The decking was rotten and needed replacing, and initially, OH intended to re-deck this area after having replaced the decking outside the back door. However, upon receiving the York stone, he decided instead to pave the area.

He started this job a few weeks ago using some bags of sand left over from constructing the patio. Almost immediately, it was starting to look so much better. When we returned from Yorkshire, he continued and finished laying the majority of the pavers, leaving just a few small gaps to either fill with gravel or cut down pavers. He mainly did this to enable some scaffolding to go up to assist the building work next door and to aide him in repainting the back and side of the house.

Here's a current picture of progress with this project:

It will, of course, be finished properly once the scaffolding comes down, but already it looks so much better and it was a good choice that will have cost us nothing but the price of a bag or two of gravel and also afforded us the priviledge of recycling some beautiful stone pavers.

We have now got plans for this side return space, which is little used, save as a dumping ground for garden items.  OH wants to build a lean to greenhouse into this space, possibly a bit like this one above, that I found on Pinterest, so that we can grow seedlings outside and house all of our garden equipment away from the decking, giving us more space to sit out and use the garden in the warmer weather. 

We're both really excited by this project and it will probably complete our plans for the garden, save for just building up the borders with plants and maintaining it. I'm not sure when it will get built or to what exact design, but hopefully it will be finished before the spring, so that we can put it to good use.

OH has worked hard to completely transform our garden in the last two years, as can be seen from the above photograph; from building the garden room, replacing the decking and fencing on one side, constructing a new patio and paving the side return. It is a completely different space now and one we can really enjoy going forward. I can't wait for this last project to make it the tidy, functional, low maintenance space we've always dreamed of.

I'll keep you posted with future progress, but it might be a while, as the house maintenance will be given precedence and will preoccupy OH for the coming weeks. It's very exciting though.