The back garden is, unsurprisingly, at the back of the house.

My husband always thinks of the back of the house as the front of the house. That’s because our back door is our front door. I always forget about this when I’m telling him about the back garden. Half way through one of our conversations he’ll ask a question and it becomes obvious that the garden I’m talking about isn’t the one he’s thinking about.

The back garden is where most of my flowers are grown. It’s big, sunny and sheltered. Half way through autumn I decided to completely change the back garden. It had two main gardens or borders or what you will, where my roses and other perennial plants grew. The rest of the garden was all raised beds. All different shapes and sizes. All crammed together with no thought to any coherent plant. It was a mess. I grew all my flowering annuals in these raised beds. And lots of dahlias.

It’s that old cliche. Building the plane while you’re flying it. But that’s what I had to do. Make a new garden while the old garden was still growing and flowering.

It was like one of those stupid brain teasing games where you had to move the parts of the puzzle around on the board to make a stupid impossible shape. That was me. Moving plants and empty raised beds to different parts of the back garden, again and again and again. Every day the beds piling up, the dug up plants in plastic bags piling up. I had to keep moving them around so I could work on a new part of the garden.

I didn’t have a plan of this glorious new garden. I figured it all out as I went along.

When we first moved into our house in December 2021 the back garden was almost bare. There was a weed infested lawn, a few leggy lavender bushes and a line of piddly trees along the back fence.

Over the following years I created a garden.

The raised beds became a pain in the ass. They were hard to water and dried out easily. I had to keep topping them up with soil because the soil level kept shrinking. There wasn’t any room for my wheelbarrow because the paths were too narrow. Hell, some of the paths were too narrow to walk down. The raised beds were devoid of worms and other signs of soil life.

Last month I read a book about soil and the the whole world that lives and dies in it. I figured if my plants were planted in good living soil they would be healthier and make better flowers. But, most importantly, I want my garden to be a proper cottage garden. A bustling ecosystem. A haven for wildlife. And it wasn’t any of those things with all those raised beds.

So they all went. It took a few weeks and a lot of digging and lifting. There were moments I wanted to give up. There were times I was so exhausted I had to lie down and close my eyes. But it was worth it. I’m going to be able to grow more flowers and create beautiful soil. And you know what. I didn’t find any worms living in the raised beds.

The back garden is a sandhill. The entire section is one giant sandhill. A previous owner made a terrace to flatten out the back garden and added a lot of imported soil. I’ve added lots of compost and mulch over the years, so the top layer of soil is pretty good. I’m hoping that the soil I’ve added from the raised beds will leap back into life once I add my homemade compost and mulch. And plants.

One of the best parts of all this garden deconstructing and remaking is the thinking. In between listening to podcasts and audio books I had time to think. It was the best way to review the flower season that’s been and plan for the next. I find I think and problem solve best when I’m walking or gardening.

So here it is. Emptied of all the raised beds. All 27 of them (I think). All the dahlias and other perennials replanted. My main path laid (albeit in a very rustic style) and my secondary paths ready to be covered in arborist mulch.