It looks FAB. It makes me smile whenever I see it. It looks like the mother of the bride at a blousy wedding.

Yesterday, me and Jade were talking on my doorstep and a really nice mum from school walked by who’s had a really bad year. She didn’t know the other garden was mine – and she just said she loved it – it always cheered her up when she walked past. And that felt like a good thing.

Looks nice. Has flourished because of the rain. The long-flowering plants we bought are doing the business. The sweet peas aren’t doing brilliantly. I don’t know if this is because they were spindly to start with or if they need more feeding/ watering/ love and attention. (Who knows with sweetpeas). Some of the “wild” stuff I put in has done v well too. There are lots of butterflies and some bees.

It needs a bit more love – regular weeding and dead-heading which I forgot about. I guess the newer a garden is, the more looking after it needs. Also is hard to just “pop by”, especially in the summer. And it needs a plan for the veg/ fruit. We can’t just grow it and let it bolt/ rot.

Luke and I went in on our way back from the shoe shop on Saturday and he took all these.

It’s kind of on it’s 3rd cycle of the summer. It looked great, then awful; then great, then okay-sh. I’ve tied it up and now it looks v good at again. Don’t be scared to tidy it up and cut stuff back. Other stuff will come through!

Sunflowers and 4 o’clock flowers doing the business. Also lots of ground-cover/ green growth – which I think is just because of the rain. On the flip side, I planted some tomatoes from Chris round the corner too and they haven’t even got flowers it’s been so wet. I also added the last of the sunflowers which wouldn’t survive in my garden because of the snails. It is full of small pollinators. So that is a success.

I’ve also talked to a lot of people while I do it – which can be annoying as it slows you down – but is also a nice way to build community. So I guess it is really working for that too.

I still can’t get the angles in the photos right but it has been looking fab. It makes me smile when I go past. It has a lot of Turkish sage in it, which I wouldn’t have in my own garden but is looking pretty good – and it is holding on. It is nice that it has moved through the season and still looks nice but in a different way,

It is really hard to take decent pics of it. It’s partly the angle and partly because I feel like I am lurking. There’s someone new living there and they often sit working at the window and it seems odd to take pics.

I THINK it looks lovely. It makes me smile as I walk past it and it’s full of flowers and looks like a meadow. The turkey sage I got from Lidka is coming up now, and looks like little pagodas (though I am v glad they’re not in my garden).

This is the garden at the end of my block. It is on the corner, in full sun most of the day and next to a big plane tree. It’s very dry and the soil is poor.

The house is rented and belongs to someone who lives round the corner. I asked if I could take it over because it was full of weeds that get chopped twice a year – and then empty til the weeds grow again.

I have planted it with a lot of leftovers and things that have seeded in my garden, including lots of wild flowers that I’d had in pots or from Patrick.

The first year it looked really fab. The salad burnet was awesome, there were sunflowers, 4 o’clock flowers that Maxine gave me and lots of tomatoes given to me by another lady down the road. They were lots of bees and butterflies and I think more worms too.

Lots of people – even random strangers – said how much they liked it. It was really fun to do because:

• It was always going to be better than it was
• It was just an experiment
• There was no pressure to make it fit together/ be a coherent “statement” garden, it was just a jumble
• It’s not the kind of space I’ve ever gardened before

This year, it feels like it should be better than last year – and I think already it will be.