5) The Suburban Homestead Garden. Drudgery or Joy to Build Paradise?

Drudgery or Joy?

By Sindy Wakeham

You want a garden paradise that meets all your desires for beauty, food production, connection with  nature and enjoyment. You have a garden space but not acreage. You want your own Eden, a version of homesteading or small holding in the suburbs.

You DON'T want Tom and Barbara's version of The Good Life. The lack and drudgery can be a turn off. You don't want back breaking slog in all weathers. You don't want muddy boots on carpets. You don't want the cost and responsibility of animal husbandry and besides, your local council won't allow anything more than a couple of chickens and NO cockerels. Maybe you do want a couple of chickens. You don’t have a fortune in the bank and only have a tiny budget if any.

I love The Good Life TV series. I love the humour and the idea of self-sufficiency, as in living off the land and escaping the ‘system’. It was what started my husband and my journey toward growing our own and yearning for our own version of The Good Life over 33 years ago.

Then we got into Gardener’s World and dabbled in growing a few veggies in corners of our suburban garden between jobs and raising two young children. We battled ill health, job loss, selling our home and swapping it for social housing out of need and moved house a couple of times since then. We had jobs and dabbled along the way with allotment gardening.

Fast forward 33 years and we now have what I would call our little Eden. It's a suburban version of a smallholding or homestead resembling cottage garden complete with ‘forest’ garden/cottage garden. It has a mini orchard, potager garden (raised bed veg garden), outdoor room in the form of a veranda, a potting shed, workshop and studio. Yes, we’ve crammed it all into our suburban council house garden! We aren’t done yet and continue to find projects to beautify and make our little Eden as productive and beautiful as possible with the space available.  

If you are new to Blue Garden Cottage, You can catch up on progress by heading to previous blogs, my YouTube channel, and in my book, Escaping the Dole to Blue Garden Cottage and my Facebook page , also Blue Garden Cottage.

I’m not boasting how great we’ve been at gardening. We don't have it all worked out and we can hardly claim to completely ‘live off the land’. I wouldn't say it is good enough for the likes of Country Living Magazine but it IS our wonderful space.

I’m proving it IS possible to build your version of The Good Life and yes, there may be a little physicality along the way but it won’t feel like it by the time you're chilling in the garden sitting in your outdoor dining or lounge area sipping an iced herbal tea in the middle of summer with your feet up. 

There's been times when hubby and I wondered if it was even worth it when pests devastated crops and weather is the weather here in the UK. It never respects your order for perfect balance of good rain at night, warm sunny and dry days, and a very long summer lasting 9 months of the year. That’s not much to ask, is it?

I’m not giving you a bullet point breakdown of all the negatives and solutions, or a table of pros and cons. That will be in the future book and I can’t even give you the title of it yet. You’ll have to watch this space.

For now I’m answering the question, drudgery or paradise?

My personal experience is that your first and most important consideration is your WHY. The WHY that keeps you going when things seem to be getting worse and not better with no end in sight. It’s the thing that keeps you coming back for more and makes you look like a masochist. It’s something you would keep doing even if there were no actual need and nobody was watching.

I think that’s the important point. To do something because it’s a passion or you want it to be. You might not even like it to start with but you want it so badly you will begin to love it until it grows into a passion. That’s the case for anything in life, not just gardening. If you want it badly enough you will do whatever it takes to get it. It’s human nature. If the thoughts you think are in fact the blueprint for your reality, mindset is the key. I talk about that in this blog.

What if you don’t know where to start? 

What if you have no money spare at all? 

What if it’s more physical than you can handle? 

What if you live in a flat with no garden and don’t have a car so how do you get your stuff to and from the space you do find? 

Look, I’m not going to lie. There are hundreds of considerations because every person, household, preferences and resources are totally individual.  Here are a few suggestions to go with my previous observations blog.

Start with what you have, if you don’t have, consider asking someone and keeping your eyes peeled for opportunities. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. I have on occasion passed a skip in a driveway and spotted something I could use. I knocked on the door to ask and I’ve never been turned away. If you are, that’s ok. Say thank you and keep looking elsewhere. 

There are free pages on Facebook and maybe a community board in your local library. If friends and family are clearing out, offer to help and see what you can reuse.

Where space is concerned, if you don't have a garden, ask a family member or close friend who has a garden they can’t manage if you can garden it for them and share the bounty with them. Sign up for an allotment or ask your local council if there’s a council plot of land you could rent for ‘city farming’.  

If the issue is physical ability, you can find volunteers in friends, family and the gardening community for help and design a garden fit for your needs.

For ideas, I used to scroll gardening books and magazines, libraries and catalogues. When the internet came along, I used Google images. Pinterest came along...HOOKED! If I were you, I’d skip right there. Go straight to the source of inspiration. I have loads of boards and pins for inspiration in every aspect of gardening, home, crafts, you name it.

One of  my other blog pins on Pinterest.

For every problem, there is a solution and most of the time the solution is in the problem. Problems are opportunities for growth, discovery, learning and adventure.  

The work needed to build and grow Eden may at times be difficult but even the difficult can be a pleasure. The reward’s always worth the effort. We never really appreciate anything that doesn’t come with at least a bit of sweat and tears, maybe a drop of blood or two and a fair few coins.

It's obvious from offerings of free courses in numerous topics, students often drop out and have no incentive to complete projects or tasks because they aren't invested. It’s that universal law thing again. You get out what you put in. So even a small fee for small courses keeps a person invested. It’s the same for every activity or project in life.

Sometimes you can’t have paradise without a bit of drudgery but like I said, choose your language to start with and it won’t feel like drudgery. Ban the word. Use creativity, process, fun and play instead. We tell children to make a hard thing a game to help them get through it...why don’t WE?

How long it takes, how much it costs (coin or effort), what you put in and get out are entirely up to you. ‘The (garden) is your oyster’, to twist a phrase. You are the designer and builder of your world, your garden, your Eden, your paradise.

Happy gardening!

Your suburban homesteading and homemaking buddy

Sindy.

PS, If you have found some value in this article or would like me to deep dive into any particular subject to do with homesteading, gardening, homemaking, please let me know. Your feedback and interaction is super valuable and appreciated.