Our HUGE new build garden transformation | cottage style garden, adding borders & character | ep.4

In episode 4 of our garden transformation series, we take on our new build garden and give it a huge charming cottage-style makeover! Come along as we add flower borders, structure, and character to create a beautiful, blooming garden. Perfect for anyone looking for new build garden ideas & inspiration, or how to add interest to a blank garden canvas.

chapters
0:16 intro
0:48 our plant
2:30 staring to dig the borders
7:55 planting hydrangea
9:46 trip to the gaden centre
13:56 planting one border
16:12 buying more plants!
18:08 onto planting the next border
25:19 BEFORE & AFTER
25:52 garden tour
33:41 future plans & reflecting on progress

m e n t i o n e d
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s u p p o r t
♡ My Book, an intentional life – https://getbook.at/AnIntentionalLife
♡ My Etsy store (hand made crystal jewellery) – https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/luanacreationsbykay
♡ My Ethical Crystals Store – https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/luanagemstones
♡ Planners & Trackers Designed By Me https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/LTLYLdesigns

p l a y l i s t s
♡ Peaceful Homemaking – https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU8dbp7lJKAVL4y-dydTIam0kv74uFRQI
♡ Echo & Rory – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU8dbp7lJKAWM7je41N59jEihTw8b0-kd
♡ Cosy Slow Living Days – https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU8dbp7lJKAXIm2efZ4XNyfmID90dsoZ8
♡ Money & Budgeting – https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU8dbp7lJKAXA70qnJNck5QuA1XYff3u-

Other places to find + connect with me:
♡ Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/livingthelifeyoulove/
♡ Echo & Rorys Instagram 🐾 – https://www.instagram.com/dailylifewithechoandrory/
♡ My blog – https://www.livingthelifeyoulove.co.uk/

~ m u s i c ~
Epidemic Sound
LTLYL Playlist – https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7qdIkRmoqAqravdpMAtQA7

This video isn’t sponsored, all opinions are my own
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Kay x

[Music] hi there welcome back to I think we’re on episode four of our garden renovation series got myself a nice cup we are going to crack on today feel like it’s going to be a bit of a mashup of different days we’ve got so many projects going on today i think today I want to prioritize doing borders we’ve also got the pergola to paint we are starting to do prep for the patio which is so exciting so the patio slabs will arrive soon i don’t know if we’ll get round to doing that in this video but it’s definitely coming up very very soon i feel like it’s going to make a huge difference to the entire garden so it’s going to be a good one grab yourself a cuper and let’s get cracking as you can see where the edge of this is this is going to be patio all the way over there it’s going to go around there and also all under here and around the bins it just means we get so much more space and then eventually probably a description up here as well which is going to look so good i’m so excited then this is going to be a border so yeah I’m so excited to see this come to life and bring you along with us it’s going to be a DIY project so just can’t wait to see the back of these i’m sorry about the fashion statement these Oh so excited to see the back look at Charlie’s cute tractor borrowed it from my mom to keep him busy while we’re in the garden it’s very busy in here dom got like 30 snapdragons that need planting i got my coffee look at this cute mug i definitely got this Dom for his birthday as an excuse to get another cute mug i’m not doing a very good job of showing you so cute so Dom did these wire like trelluses I suppose where you can make the tension stronger as the plants grow up so yeah we’ve got all the clatuses planted now as I showed you in our last video but it’s going to I don’t know i think it’s going to look so nice when this all covers then over here it goes like the whole way across because there are so many climbers in different spots all the way down look how well the loopins are doing oh I love love love these so much and then this little guy planted these the other week and they just look so happy and vibrant [Music] yeah like bring it [Music] okay right i’ll just do one bit at a time then we can always change it can’t we [Music] [Music] the hair is up i do not envy landscape gardeners backbreaking work we’ve changed we’ve changed where we’re going to do the border again so it’s coming out a bit further just to make it make a bit more sense I think I’m going to put a hydranger just in front of this chair here so fingers crossed that looks good um just trying to take the very top off the grass rather than like take loads out just so we’ve left with more soil i think it’s going well though i’m just going to keep going it’s not even a hot day like last time but God it’s hard work [Music] it’s crazy how long it takes to dig a border oh my goodness but I’m happy with that at least we can get things planted then we can get it all mulched um ignore my tripod then it’ll look so much better next having a baby shower if that’s what you can hear but I’m going to get this guy planted in the ground and I’m going to get this broly cuz it’s a bit wet it’s better [Music] we got rained off yesterday and then Charlie woke up from his nap so that was the end of that anyway we’ve got some time to ourselves this afternoon so we’re going to crack on with as much as we can if you hear in a minute a noise it’s Dom hoovering his car um but I’m going to go in the garden and I’m going to get started planting the borders get that hydranger properly planted because literally like as soon as I started trying to plant it yesterday it just tipped it down um and then Charlie woke up she’s like “Right we’ll just we’ll just start again tomorrow the hair is going up you know she means business i just really want to get these planted so that we can just plant things into the borders rather than having to constantly like keep planting things into plant pots and then I can start sorting out the pergllar so I am going to paint it I think in the end i’ve decided I’m going to paint it the same color as the shed so that should be really exciting i want to get some cute fairy lights so that’ll probably be more towards the end of the video but for now we’re going to focus on planting because that is a huge part of a garden isn’t it like having space to put the plants the beginning part of the garden is going to be like probably towards the end when we’ve done the patio because there’s no point making a border and then just keep trampling through it back and forth so I’m going to be focusing more on the borders in the back part of the garden that is the plan for today so we’ve got some really big things from our old house that need planting and they’re just desperate like the plant pots are in are just too small so we’re going to get cracking i actually got some chocolate cake i’m very excited we got some chocolate cake yesterday it was Do you want me to put the plug are you going to have a chocolate cake break daring yes i think this could have done with going in the fridge actually look at it now anyway they had a baby shower yesterday so they lent our parasol cuz it just tipped it down on them and then they came around back with the parasol and brought us cake so we’re going to have some chocolate cake probably a nice cuper make some dinner and then we need to really get started on this garden we’ve got today and sometime tomorrow so I’m going to get done as much as I possibly can bring you all along with me and hopefully we have a good transformation i’m just so excited to have some proper plants in the garden you know I’m so fed up of seeing plant pots everywhere [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] don’t know if you can see that but me and Dom often have differing opinions about things so I’m a quite visual person so I asked him to draw what he has in mind so I can see this works really well for any of you out there who are doing similar projects so I’m going to try and do this wave that he’s thinking of cuz it has like a vision and we’ll see what it looks like [Music] so we’re on a mission to buy our plants for the border today wish us luck feeling overwhelmed already these are so cute what are you you’re a lavender aren’t you a pink lavender they’re really cute i like the colors they’re just an annual do you think I found the section this looks like the cottage garden section so I’m happy about that these guys so beautiful lip pens how do I not buy [Music] Can you tell that I like pink purple and white by any chance these are gorgeous green houses look at that i found chameleas i don’t think that they’d have them in because they’re not flowering now but I really wanted a pink one so I think I’m gonna have to get this online we’re in business dom’s found them and it’s in flower looking for it gorgeous okay i don’t even want to look at the price oh my god shocking frozen debbie you’re coming home with us ebs so pretty she’s not flowering though but next year my bank balance is not going to thank me the car is very full excuse me everyone so we’re back home we’ve got the goods dom’s put them all down so nicely but we can kind of see what we’ve got crazy how much this cost and I feel like it’s not even going to fill one of the borders but it’s going to be an ongoing project i feel like I’ve tried to buy multiples of things to see if that helps a little bit so excited for this this is an orange blossom and it smells so good when it’s flowering and then I couldn’t let up this centhus which is like a pink x cenus you’ll know I love pink and purple and white so it naturally happened that everything is pink purple and white but yeah hopefully it looks nice when it’s all in the border [Music] it’s yet another day um Dom went away and I just have not had chance to get these things planted i really want to turn all the soil up add some compost just get it really good and then plant everything so I’m going to do it today hopefully I get chance to do it and then we’re going to crack on with some more gardening later on in this week but yeah it’s there’s been a bit of a time delay so the flowers might not be looking quite as perky as they were when I bought them 5 days ago not quite my intention there but you know what sometimes life just happens and gardening just has to be at the bottom of the priority list rory’s just come to see me here these two are desperate to go outside but won’t be very long now until we’ve got you a little cat here will it i thought I’d do a little voice over over this piece because there is a lot of footage of me doing a lot of the same so we obviously had two different borders where they all needed digging out the soil all needed turning over we needed to add compost to that soil if you’ve not watched another one of these videos our soil here is like a really heavy clay soil it’s terrible the drainage is awful and plants just do not thrive in it so to save us the heartbreak of planting things and then dying we thought we’ll just try to improve the soil as best we can then every year we can just try to add more every time we add new plants we can just add more compost and that was kind of the idea behind what we did we didn’t necessarily want to take lots of clay soil out and put lots of new compost in so we kind of just mixed it all together which in the end has worked really really well so in one of our little borders if you remember back to I think it was episode one of our garden diaries we started adding sand to our soil and I am so happy to report that the soil where we added the sand is in such better condition than the rest of the garden so that was definitely a great thing to do if you’re in a similar predicament to us um but for now we are just adding just compost basically to the soil you’ll have seen me sometimes sprinkling little white things on that is microisal fungi hopefully I’m saying that right i think I am which is basically just something that really helps the roots to take and it just kind of protects them i believe it protects them from diseases though I may be making that part up so if I say it with confidence no one will question me right anyway there was lots and lots and lots of planting to be done on this day and do you know when you need to do something and that something just keeps getting pushed further and further away these plants were just screaming at me every single night that I was watering them plant me and I was like I’m trying i just don’t have time anyway I’m so glad that I finally found the time to get to do this i definitely picked the hottest day of the year so far the day I filmed this and I was sweating it was such a hot experience but once it was all planted I just thought “Oh my goodness what a difference it makes.” Like once they’re out of the pots it looks totally different all over again and I just feel like once there are some plants in it just starts to actually feel like a garden to me i couldn’t live without a proper garden with plants in you know i just feel like it makes it feel like home for me we’re back again another day another garden center we’re going to buy some more bits for our borders today so we’ll bring you along see what we can get do love a good garden center it’s so sunny today beautiful day we’ll get one of these guys delphinium pretty just going to fill this trolley and hope for the best to the roses what’s new some beautiful ones [Music] some lots in the border now it’s looking very full we still need to nip to another one to get something for here some lavenders um and a chamililla chameleia let’s call it the wrong thing a chameleia to go here [Music] another garden center buying even more plants i think we’re going to need to make the borders bigger at this rate [Music] this is a very full car we already had a very full garden oh my goodness let’s get these planted right everyone tuck yourselves in welcome to K and Dom’s flower shop oh my goodness i feel like the garden is such a money pit but we’re getting there got so many beautiful things we need to turn all of this up now fill it with compost and just make it a little bit better like I did on this side over here then oh you’re not going to be able to hear me and then get everything planted it’s incredibly difficult to try and visualize where everything’s going to go but this is what we’ve gone with so far and then yeah we need to get these all planted now but we’re getting there it’s nice to have lots of different heights mixed in and different colors as well [Music] so we’ve got them all back to where we want them to be we are yet to plant them though but I’m thinking it’s looking so full i can’t wait to see them all planted it’s feeling like a proper garden now so excited to see this come together i hope you’re all enjoying seeing it come together so far these grasses I love them so we are going to get a little stepping stone for here to walk through i’ll show you what it looks like from the other side so yeah from the house is what we’re This is what we’re dealing with obviously we’ve got a lot of random stuff that wouldn’t be there normally except for it probably would let’s be honest because uh we have a toddler but yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] It is yet another day we’re about to go to BNQ and get some mulch to finish off our borders but I was planting until so late last night um Dom managed to cut the grass and I’m really excited to show you all today it’s coming together so well so yeah that is the plan for today this video has been multiple days in the making but you can’t always do everything you want to do in a day and we’ve kind of noticed that lately you know if this was us a few years ago we’d have had this probably done in a week instead it takes us months to do a project now but I kind of think it’s nice you kind of lean into it you get to think about what you’re doing as you go um and definitely helps with the budget as well because honestly planting from scratch cost an absolute fortune but at least it’s a pretty fortune anyway let’s go day of the garden center we are at BQ today getting some bark for the borders a garden center it is a garden center look I can see plants so yeah we’re going to get some of this landscape bark to finish off the borders and help to keep in some moisture as well no weeds no weeds how beautiful are these love a hydranger so many gorgeous plants around at the minute my toxic trait is coming somewhere like this and being like “Yeah I could get some of those.” Oh there’s so many beautiful ones i mean look at that never even seen that before what are you able so beautiful this will forever remind me of being a child and planting these in my little Wendy house i had it had a little planter so cute the goods and we’re off another day in the garden very very full car load this poor car is able to keep this week so there’s not much left in the greenhouse now we’ve got a few pianies that are going to go well they might even stay in pots they need bigger pots though if we’re going to do that um lots of displays plant pots it just shows how much we planted there’s a few cosmos left again we’ve still got this border to do and then over there there’s another border then these front borders as well so there’s still lots of plants to plant at some point and then all these gorgeous bits and bobs i can’t remember what these are what are these are they fuchsia granny bonnets they’re granny bonnets they’re fuchsia the two close to us those chest daisies pretty hit the back of cosmos and then the two right in the corner of those cone flowers the blue fist oh yeah okay so these ones are all fuchious those four on the back of fuches yeah so we’ve got lots of bits and bobs to plant and then there’s all these little snap dragons which are so cute what a cute name so I’m going to plant these in the border before we put the mulch down just so that it’s done otherwise I feel like it’s going to be really hard to plant these i might need to find somewhere for one of these fuchsia as well cuz we’re going to have like a border of fuches if not [Music] it’s m time [Music] [Music] heat heat [Music] so we are all done i am so happy that one half of the garden is ready just don’t get a jump scare in a minute but this is the other half chaos chaos on that half but we’re just going to ignore that half cuz we have finished this half officially so so pleased so obviously this is going to be patio we’ve actually got our slabs which I will show you in a different video but they’ve arrived so this is all going to get um paved in time hopefully soon um we still got a little cute area with the rocking chairs but in time we’re going to have some sort of like a sofa dining table and then two armchair situation and these two guys are going to move down to the back over there so yeah that’s the vision for here and there will be lots of different height things here as well but at the minute there’s no point putting anything in here cuz they’ll just get trampled on as we do the patio so we’ve left this i’ve just literally these are still in they’re still in pots so yeah then over here I’m so pleased with how this is turning out so obviously we’ve got the jasmine climbing up the pergola which I still need to paint that’s another day another day’s project we’ve got the grasses which again I’ve not planted these two just purely because they’re going to get trampled on loads with putting the patio slabs in cuz it’s going to like come all the way up to here they’re like in line with where it is currently um so yeah I really love how this little corner’s turned out we’ve got all the gorgeous grass i call these engineers what are they actually en Echanatia echanatia some gorgeous echania which again need planting but I’m going to do that in time we got a gorgeous Camila a chameleia not a Camila chameleia mrs tingley the one I was going to get was called Debbie um but it was so expensive so we are going to find another one that was a bit smaller for I’ll show you in a minute over there but we went with this one for here and it’s the most gorgeous flowers that is so pretty we’ve got some clatus climbing up the back there and then I’ll just take you guys around in fact we can go through so we use this path a lot for accessing the garden so we were like let’s just make it into a thing we’re going to get a little stepping stone here because in time there will be stepping stones going up to the greenhouse and over there so it’ll all kind of flow hopefully in time we obviously have the washing line here normally but I just took it out for the sake of this video so if I stand back a little bit look how nice that has turned out i literally am obsessed we did such a good job well it was Dom who cut it but so sweet and it’s beautiful with the greenhouse at the back okay so yeah we’ve got the grass we have I can’t remember what these flowers are called but they are very very beautiful we’ve got some aliums that are ready to go we’ve got delphinium at the back can’t remember what this guy is either budlia here this is a gorgeous pink one and we’ve got some lavender some tiny um this agapanthus which might be one of my new favorites a purple one kind of tried to do things repeating so we’ve got like agapanthas there agapanthus there um I’ve no idea what this was called in the end i’ll try and find the name of it and leave it but it’s so beautiful and we’ve got a rose here i don’t know if it’s a climber or if it’s a bush oh my gosh there’s a butterfly i’ve noticed so many more butterflies since we planted all these as well we have some moninder down there then dia i’m so excited to show you guys these when they bloom they’re going to be beautiful what’s this one down here delphinium so that’s going to be so nice it’s so nice keeping the tags when you don’t know what they are like for care and stuff we’ve planted the little snapdragons you can see them popping up everywhere all around gorgeous looping at the back there some more lavender another delinium so like I said just trying to repeat the pattern a little bit um and then a gorgeous hydrangeanger there which in time this will get massive so we just kind of filled the border for this year but in time we might need to like reassess and reevaluate so that’s that border over here we have another clatus climbing in time i would love to do a little brick block paving semicircle for under the egg chair because obviously the grass doesn’t grow under there um but that’s fine these guys are so cute so what are you called irresistible i don’t know but they are really really pretty they’re looking a bit frazzled with the sun this border here gets so much sun we’ve got some Crocs uh mirror there up at the back these are the shasha daisies which are so beautiful another me agapanthas there and another matching one over there and then I’ve got some echanatia some pink echanatia some loop pins some cosmos like there’s just like a really gorgeous mix of all my favorite things another dia there some more cosmos i can’t remember what these are i wish it had the ow that was spiky you’re mean this is going to be beautiful though when it grows i just really wanted like taller things at the back and then smaller things at the front just to give it some interest we’ve got a little cute little fuchsia here beautiful rose h that is a cenus which has probably seen better days it was a gorgeous pink centhus but it’s gone a bit crispy so that might need replacing in time it got it was very rootbound and I just didn’t plant it quite fast enough some more shasha daisies there gorgeous lavender um they agapanththers i’m just literally saying names you know got granny ponets and then a little cute cluster of three different cosmos there which is going to look so nice some more in fact this is thyme i love time it smells so nice and it flowers so beautifully it’s actually a really easy cheap way to fill a border some more snapdragons also orange blossom which again had a bit of a hard time so we’ll see whether that you know blossoms and blooms in time and then this clatus which is doing so well so yeah that is my borders that I’ve planted really really pleased with it i think it’s looking so so nice um and then the greenhouse obviously you guys have seen the greenhouse so many times but I just think it’s really coming together so well and I’m so happy with the salvia and ders I planted like I feel like it just ties everything together you might be wondering what the heck is going on over here dom’s decided to do not even a no mo may patch just like a no mo patch apparently it’s good for the wildlife so we’re just going to go along with it um we’ve got this massive hydranger here anyway so we do need to create yet another border to go all the way around here but as you can see it’s very much a building site right now so we have lots and lots of stuff to displace from over there um as we do the patio once the patio’s done we can start figuring this out but there’s going to be another border here to fill and then over here I think this looks like a giant blue bum there won’t be any border behind here cuz this is Charlie’s domain so just these little clatus that are going to climb up and cover the fence hopefully in time and then patio I’ve said this to you guys I think a lot now but patio will start or end here and then there will be a tiny thin border that goes along here stops and then carries on past there so yeah that is it i am so so happy with how it’s turned out and I really hope you’ve all enjoyed coming along and seeing it come to life i think I’m going to end today’s video here i feel like we’ve made a huge huge difference i didn’t achieve quite what I thought I was going to do but I always forget how long it takes to dig to plant obviously planting from scratch is very different to having borders that are already dug so I really hope you’ve enjoyed coming along and seeing it all transform and come to life i feel like now the garden and the grass is cut like you can really see all the different swoops of the border feel like all the plants are looking so beautiful i’m really really excited to see this all just keep blossoming growing and oh it’s just making my soul so happy so probably on our next garden um episode in this series is going to be us doing the patio painting the pergola just making it feel really cozy and just like I feel like it’s the finishing piece of the puzzle we do still have a border to do over on this side and then this whole area here to do so there is still lots and lots to do so definitely follow along if you haven’t already and follow me on this journey of turning our garden our boring um cookie cutter garden into a gorgeous cottage style garden thank you so much for being here thank you for watching and I’ll see you all again in my next video bye