I’ve never been that type of person that wanted to spend time gardening. In the garden, yes, but gardening? Honestly, I love the idea of picking fresh fruit and vegetables to cook with, but not enough to warrant the effort needed to achieve it. We’ve tried a couple of times with a few pots with mixed and inconsistent results.

I know loads of people have taken up gardening during lockdown, as we’ve focused our attention on everything closer to home. I admired them, I still wasn’t fussed.

Then we moved house a couple of weeks ago. We left an astroturf lawn, perennial plants and a few patio pots. It suited us, then, the artificial lawn a necessity in the complete shade of a 200-year-old oak. A garden that needed tidying up rather than gardening.

We’ve moved into a south-facing garden with lawn, trees, raised beds and a greenhouse. We’ve inherited potato plants, a strawberry bed, what looks like a damson tree (should I start saving jars for jam now?), and a compost heap with a resident mouse. I don’t really know what I’m doing, I’m learning new meanings for words like “drills”, “cloche”, “thinning out” and “hardening off”. So to keep my enthusiasm and accountability, I thought I’d write about it.

This is the first – it might be the last! – garden diary as we get to grips with gardening.

I know we’re late in the year to start growing many things from seed, so we’ve opted for starting off with some already-established plants. Some courgettes and tomatoes for the greenhouse, and some sugar snap peas and climbing beans for one of the raised beds. I’ve started some wild rocket from seed, and plan to sew new salad leaves every two weeks (apparently that’s how you do it according to Jamie Oliver) to, hopefully, ensure a steady crop. We eat loads of bagged salad so it would be great to have some of that grown at home to cut down on the water and plastic that’s used in salad production.

I’m finding myself having a quiet wander around the garden at various times of the day, after the rain or in the sun, looking at the lichen, watching the birds (pied wagtails, woodpeckers, blue tits), and picking a few strawberries as the dog sniffs about in the greenhouse (she doesn’t seem bothered by the mouse). Maybe this is a result of lockdown after all. I know I have a much greater appreciation for nature from taking in the sights and sounds on our daily walks. Maybe it’s just because it’s new.

Hopefully, the next garden diary post will be in July – unless I’ve killed it all off by then.