Heyyyyyyyyy
Brill hun well done looks great. Very very similar to our back garden hun when we started and we also have bad clay earth here and have always found it difficult to grown anything nice also the fact i am rubbish at gardening.
From doing ours i would say that the lads love the high up points and the tunnels and the climbing poles the best and run about them all the time. Some of the best plants to get are the grasses like Gillan says and we have one of those grasses in our at the back of the pond. Garfy loves to wrestle it.
Lucky it's a strong plant and is doing well, just started to go green again
The other thing we have is the bamboo which can be brought from B&Q at a good price. we have 5 of them right by a high walk way so they can go through a bushy part. The only thing with the grasses is that they die down in winter so doesn't;t leave much then. We have got everygreen plants and the best ones are
The Fatsia Japonica 1st pic - Has fan type leaves where the lads can go under and hide
The two Phormium 2nd pic - long green or red stems - We have a red one and a green one.
The bamboo - at the back of the pond giving a background of green and also hiding the compost bin and side way to the back of the shed.
Small conifers - we have the mini column ones to frame the outside deck.
These are all the same in winter as in summer.
For the summer you can have
Buddleia or Hebe's 3rd pic to attract butterflys - we have 3 hebe's that are small at mo as we planted them last summer. One of the hebe's Marl loves to jump into and it's still growing very well
Cat mint of course
That grows very very well in our soil and spreads fast. Has purple flowers so attracts bugs too.
We have an area of over grown grass and various plants surrounding the fish pond which we put in for the lads to watch the fish (but although Rio loved to, Marl and Garf don't seem to know what they are!
)
They love the overgrown grass area to eat.
We have to places whereit's just earth so they have a loo. But also have two large litter trays covered out there. Marl won't go in the earth to use the loo so uses the litter trays and Garf goes in the earth. A Poo treasure hunt - ahhhh One of my fav pastime's
One thing they do really love is the high place on the top of the shed (we have a big one 10ft x 7ft high). You can easily do the same thing. I built the wooden frame and put netting over it to make a netted box. Put extra netting from the cat fencing to the top of the frame on the shed and the whole area it safe. We then had a section at the back of the shed where we put climbing poles, a outside sleeping hut and steps up to the shed roof. All this can;t be seen from the front so handy to keep the garden looking nice.
The tunnels i made from putting together 3 box frames from wooden battons then screwing 8ft fence planks to them forming an 8ft wooden tunnel. I then covered the top with shed felt to make them waterproof and put these along the bottom of the fences. We have two 8ft tunnels and one very long one running at the back of the pond that has two upper tunnels.
The walk ways around the top of the fencing was very easy as these are basically just outside fencing panel and shelf brackets. The lads love these and gives them a diff perspective of the garden. Mad dashes round the garden floor and then up all round the garden on the walk ways.
Ya all have seen pics of the garden so i won't bore ya all by posting them
but just gives ya some ideas and what my lads love out there from their view.
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