Jess Alavi-Ellis had always been a balcony gardener until she moved to a house in Nordlondon with a 98-foot garden. “I really wanted to grow things, but I had trouble getting things alive,” admits the journalist and designer. The outer space that she inherited was severely neglected; Half -concrete, half dumping ground, it was the ideal empty slate for you to start over and make the garden seriously.
As an enthusiastic traveler, she wanted to introduce Mediterranean influences to create a vacation feeling in the suburbs. But with a belly devices and a costly kitchen expansion in the house, she and her husband Darius had to roll up their sleeves to overcome the room.
Five years later, it is now a lavish retreat that is perfect for entertainment, with a play area and several places for outdoor food. And it also offers a wealth of fresh products that the family can eat. Here Alavi-Ellis explains how the transformation took place.
Plotte, level and do it well
“The garden is long and thin, but it feels really big for London and I feel so happy to have it,” says Alavi-Ellis. She immediately decided not to entertain the idea of a lawn: “We did not want to maintain mowing and thought we could do something else.”
Deleting and leveling the website was 'a Herculean task', but was worth the effort – Louisa Trataulos/Colors from Arley
Removing the concrete was a must, but a Herculean task, so it used the builders on site while the house renovation was done, and paid it to break and remove it. Then she hired a rotavator and spent a month to clear and level the country as far as possible.
The self -bump
One of the first things the couple did was to build a dandruff – from scratch. It started with a number of UPVC doors that someone gave away on site and sprayed the Alavi-Ellis black. They bought a few cheap windows, concrete bags and wood from a local courtyard and started to build what is more similar to a garden office.
The newly built dandruff is more like a garden office – Louisa Trataulos/colors of Arley
“My husband would continue before this renovation [home services marketplace] Taskrabbit to find someone who sets up a shelf, “laughs Alavi-Ellis,” but out of a financial necessity we saw YouTube videos and learned to do all kinds of things. “The dandruff is waterproof, offers an invaluable storage space and costs around 4,000 pounds of materials compared to the tens of thousands that have a design outside the TT-the-THE-PEG design.
The funny factor
“We love playing Petanque during the holidays in France, and so we thought we had our own farm would be really fun,” says Alavi-Ellis. In fact, however, it was less fun to create the dish or the slopes: “It was a big undertaking because we had to dig out the drainage so that it would not flood because this area was quite watery.”
The fun that can be on the recorded Petanque slopes is the lack of a lawn
The slopes required different gravel sizes, and since there is no connection through the Victorian terrace house, this meant bringing 18 tons of the house through the house. “We have dealt with friends and asked them to help us move it to move a grilling and a beer,” she laughs. A petrol -powered vibration plate and a roller were rented to complete the slopes. Alavi-Ellis now has two small children and sometimes questions the lack of lawn in the garden, but her four-year-old likes to go to the gravel and has her own mini boules. “We often play together as a family and I love it,” she says.
The cooking and dining area
Alavi-Ellis used the builders again and specified a bank, a fireplace and a kitchen-style island, which was built from biser blocks to create a sociable area for eating and relaxing. She estimates that the costs for all three pounds were. The bank was rendered and Alavi-Ellis paints it from the kitchen walls with the left-wing Limewash.
The island in kitchen style that Jess Alavi-Ellis flied with her father Mike-Louisa Tratasa/colors from Arley
But it was not comfortable, so it had seating plates and pillows that were made with a tailor -made fabric made of Arley. “I used yacht foam for the inner, which I ordered online and cut to size. In this way it is not the end of the world when they stay outside in the rain,” she explains. The installation of the Terrazzo tiles by Otto Tiles on the island was an unforgettable job that was done with her father Mike.
“In four years I never had to wash it with jet dry because the mortar has remained green,” she says. There is space for three bar stools on each side, so that it serves with the nearby barbecue food or positioned a portable pizza oven from small hands.
The parasol
When Alavi-Ellis realized how much sun use was in the south-west-oriented seating area, Alavi-Ellis later added a pergola. “I wanted it to feel like Greece or Italy, wherever vines grow around,” she explains. She chose a simple square sheet, and to succeed around him, were probably vines that were probably used by the previous owners, which were made of Greek-cypriotic heritage.
Vines from the previous homeowners are now growing beautifully around the Pergola – Louisa Trataulos / colors of Arley
“It makes the best out of something that was once lovingly planted and we get early flowers, followed by grapes that are hanging,” she says. She also has future designs on a “really comfortable sofa or rocking chair” to sink to the terrace.
The planting
The plants came from a local garden center – Louisa Trataulos/Colors of the Arley
Alavi-Ellis is a member of her local garden center, the garden club in Crews Hill, Enfield, which receives its reduced prices from the already inexpensive systems. “It is a garden center dream and a fraction of the price of most London garden centers,” she says. She sweated her plant budget by bought perennials at the beginning of spring that look quick and would look quick, like Geum 'Totally Mandarine', rapidly growing verbena bonarium, sambucus nigra and many grasses.
To add the existing apple and fig trees, she bought an almond tree for 60 pounds: “It has a nice flower, but the squirrels usually steal the almonds.” A farn tree was the biggest investment, “but I love it and he has already performed a lot,” says Alavi-Ellis.
The book A year full of flowers Sarah Raven made Alavi-Ellis' Springboard for what to become plants to create a wild, naturalistic appearance with flowers that left across the borders. Narcissi and Alliums, which Alavi-Ellis like to cut and bring it in, delivers a “lamp lasagna”. It also has a small cold frame on the terrace, where it builds cosmos, sweet peas and scabiosa cheap from seeds. “My daughter really loves flowers and she is often with her own scissors in the garden and is looking for a couple,” she says.
The VEG patch
The increased beds offer the family fruits such as goosebumps, raspberries, whitecurrants and rhubarb. In increased metal beds on the terrace (from £ 150, Harrod Horticultural), the family builds products such as courgets, climbing beans, strawberries and rainbow pad that are regularly picked and eaten.
Alavi-Ellis is now advising friends looking for gardening and vegetable advice, “what is always a shock for me, but I have learned so much,” she says. The garden is a refuge for entertainment in warm weather and also acts as a mood form on the creepiest winter days: “To see the pink of the bank and the green island from the kitchen always reminds me of being on vacation.”
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