Whew! A whole year in the making and it’s been and gone in a flash. And we are about to have our SECOND Open Gardens in the time it has taken me to actually get this post written…sorry!

When Leigh Stokes (creative & artist friend next door) suggested the idea of hosting the first ever Creighton Open Gardens a year ago, I was like…yes, great idea! And then I was terrified…it meant opening up my garden to a bunch of strangers and letting them walk around and critique all of my efforts. But I have to say, the weekend was wonderful! And my garden has never looked as good as it does right now. They always say there is no better way to whip your garden and home into tip top shape than to host an event. And that’s exactly what happened.

We moved into our current home, Bedford Farm…the original Hutton homestead (which my in-laws had renovated in order to turn it into a guesthouse as my husband and I didn’t have any plans to move into it in the near future because we were very content in the little cottage) just over 4 years ago. I was pregnant with our second child, Aaron, and had only been back in South Africa for about 2 years. We lived in South Korea before that (click here to read more about those adventures). Since then we’ve added another little boy to the clan, Mason, and I the garden has become my happy place.

There was one main garden bed in the garden, and my mom-in-law had moved the 8 white Iceberg roses from in front of the house, to a new bed on the side of the house. I wanted to share some progress photos, as well as before photos so you can get an idea of the progression over the past 4 years.

We also created a Food Forest out of one of the pastures behind our house. This has been a huge labor of love, because we have had a sum total of about 4 blueberries and an onion over the years. Oh, and mountains of bolted Chinese cabbage, which always goes straight to seed and has yet to give us one cabbage yet! We initially planted this in order to make our own Korean Kimchi (which we still do make but always have to rely on what’s available in store when we are ever near large supermarkets in the big city).

The back garden overlooking the Barn Owl Shed (before & progress photos)

Front Garden bed (progress photos)

New side bed overlooking the cottage

We renovated this little cottage at the bottom of our garden a little over 2 years ago now, and it has been such a wonderful addition to our home. Not just because we only have 1 bathroom in our house (which included the toilet…there is very little privacy for anyone really), and no spare rooms (this is the problem with having so many off spring!) but now this is our guest cottage and it has turned into the most wonderful & private little space.

Please do take note of the gorgeous wall mural (done by another very talented friend and another neighbour…Savannah Stokes). You’ll see in the after photos how beautifully this came out, and what a change it made to such an ugly wall, that I just wasn’t able to get anything substantial to grown in front of and cover up in time for the Open Gardens.

Hedge removed and bed opened up with new fence pole structure (before & progress photos)

My Garden over the 2023 Creighton Open Gardens Weekend (14th & 15th October 2023)

I haven’t done too much since last year’s Open Garden in preparation for this one. I’ve mainly focussed on watering and maintaining the existing beds. I have dug up one new bed in front of my kitchen (at the back of the house) which I’ll share more photos of soon. Everything will be more established this year, and I’m just holding all my thumbs and toes that all the Spring flowers won’t be over by the time of the Open Gardens weekend, because things are all starting to bloom now…and we still have 6 weeks to go. EEEEK!