Beginner Gardening: Thought you might like to see how we are getting on after 5y, 1 by PaladonPerry

PaladonPerry wrote:
Hi all at Daves garden, we have been away for 5 years nearly so have alot of catching up to do here smiles. Looking forward to catching up with old friends and making New ones.
This is about or creation of our acre garden and rebuilding of our derelict cottage on The Western Isles of Scotland. For those may be interested.
Chapter one.
The last time I was on Daves Garden was 5 years ago 2007 alot of changes gave taken place since then.
We have over an acre of garden, we live on the Western Isles of Scotland, definitely not an easy place to garden, we rebuilt a derelict cottage and created a garden out of moorland.
We do not originate from the Island we are from the mainland of UK. A tiny little village in Northumberland. We had a very small garden there, but well kept many hours of work, It was orientally themed. May daughter unknown to myself had entered the garden into a major gardening contest, run by Thompson and Morgan seeds and Garden News, we were very pleasantly surprised, when we won gardener of the year. This was in 1993. This inspired me to want a bigger garden and a cottage that we could renovate.
It would have to be done on a shoestring. So we set off looking around the UK trying to find somewhere that we could afford, we is myself and my daughter, she is also like me a mad gardener. So after having no luck on the mainland, we decided to go further afield to the Highland of Scotland, we went through a few possibilities and some of the small Islands of Scotland, we were travelling in a caravet towing a small caravan, after many disappointments and seeing various properties, we decided to hope on a ferry and go to the Western Isles. were we found this derelict cottage with an acre of very boggy moorland. I remember it was a terrible day, nothing but rain and mist. We found the owner of the property and finally got to see it, will ad some pictures later. About 8 months prior to this happening I had just went through 2 major operations after a serious accident. I had a 60ft fall, which I was determined I would recover from.
Anyway back to seeing the property. I took one look and said to my daughter " there is know way I could do the work that is needed to the property", the roof was totally gone and had been open to the elements for 12 years. It would have needed to be striped out totally and a new roof, no electric, totally derelict. so feeling very sad a deflated, we decided to travel to the ferry to go home. Fortunately though we missed the ferry and had to find somewhere to park so we could sleep over. All night long it was torrential rainfall, could not get a wink of sleep of the noise of the wind and the rain. But eventually when daybreak came the weather had quietened down. I opened the door on the caravan to behold a beautiful site, I was looking across a deep valley with a sea loch and the sun was glinting across the water. We had an early breakfast and decided to go and have a look at this derelict cottage. I guess it must have been the sunshine. that made it look more inviting and my daughter Mary-Anne said "Go on dad you can do it, I will do everything I can to help".
The cottage overlooks a fresh water loch and is in sheep territory and the peace and tranquillity was so beautiful, I guess at this point we both fell in love with it. But did we have our work set out to make it into a home. The dream I had as a young man, was going to turn into a reality. This is where I will ad some pictures. You must appreciate we done all this work ourselves just the two of us, we had to live in a trailer for 2 years while making the house water tight and liveable.