A new blog; a new post: where to begin?
I've always been interested in gardening- from as long as I can remember. My father, grand-mother and great grandfather are (and were) keen gardeners, but appreciation and knowledge are two separate things. I'm beginning to realise that I know very little.
I understand the difference between a perennial and a biennial; every midsummer, I make a pilgrimage to Hidcote Manor Gardens. I've tried to grow a few things from seed (with very mixed results). I watch the occasional gardening programme on television, but when it comes to the finer points of horticulture, I have to admit that I haven't got a clue; or at least, I'm more often or not in the dark. But being an optimist has its rewards: and I've got great things planned for our tiny London garden. Great things.

I think it was the 18th century landscape gardener, Lancelot "Capability" Brown who said "Consult the Genius of the Place"; I've subsequently discovered that this phrase was lifted from Alexander Pope.
We bought our London townhouse about two years ago, and up until now have done nothing with the garden, which we've more or less abandoned- having concentrated so far on restoring the interior of the house. We've got some inherited urns, a rusty Regency ironwork bench, and a pair of stone lions we bought for a song from a local auction house, but apart from digging up the previous owners' box plants and re-planting them in two of the urns, so far that's about it.
The house was built around 1870 (I like to call it American Civil War period) in the South Lambeth area of London. It's just south of the River Thames (relatively close to the Houses of Parliament), Vauxhall lies to the North (an urban sprawl of building sites, traffic gyratories, derelict warehouses and dodgy nightclubs, now ripe for re-generation).
The house is part of a typical London brick and stucco terrace- four stories high (including the basement), but because we're almost at the end of the street, our tiny "garden", really more of a back yard, is an awkward triangular, pointy shape. And I stress tiny: it's about seven metres long, by five-and-a-half metres wide.
My heart sank when we first set eyes upon it. The previous owners had done their best to tidy it up by planting scented geraniums and some box (buxus sempervirens), but the disadvantages seemed to stack up with relative ease: the yard is overooked by high buildings to the South and to the East. At breakfast it's sunny enough, but by the afternoon, we're in shade. And there's a strange thing going on with the levels, too- the barred kitchen windows look directly onto an ugly concrete wall, and there's a set of mean little steps going up to the main terrace, paved in a nasty concrete which is supposed to look like "York Stone". There's a silly, scraggy conifer in the corner (accentuating the dreaded point, like the bow of a ship), and two manky roses with bad cases of blackspot. There is some trellis, but it's rotten and falling to pieces.

Looking West: barred kitchen windows looking onto a concrete wall. I've dug up the previous owner's box plant, given it a haircut and repotted it in an Italian terracotta urn. Original Victorian shutters in desperate need of restoration. Lovely mid 19th century ironwork, currently covered in a gungy, thick black paint.

Looking East: nasty, scraggy conifer thing. Have no idea what it is. It has to go.