Bank Holiday Garden Work (on a budget)

I have not posted for a few days as we have been very busy getting some work done in our garden. We are very lucky to have a lovely garden, but since moving in we have not done much to it due to lack of funds. The only real work we have done is build our chickens a home as they obviously needed somewhere to live (we have 6 chickens). Currently all our gardening equipment and my partners 'man things' are stored in our garage which means we are unable to use the garage as it was originally intended - as a mini gym. The first stage in rectifying this was to get some sheds sorted out. 

Now sheds range in price depending on the quality and although we could afford cheap ones we wanted a 'better quality' one that would last. We were very lucky in that my grandparents were getting rid of theirs and offered it to us for free. So we ended up with a decent quality shed (in need of some repairs) for the cost of hiring a van and petrol - about £60. My Dad offered to come and help us put it up and to build a proper base for it to go on too. Thankfully we have had great weather the past few days and have managed to get the area cleared, a concrete base down and the shed up and re-felted. The shed will need re-painting and we did have to buy some new felt (£30) but the slabs were re-used from our old house and we got all the hardcore for the base for free from Freecycle (if you have not heard of this look it up here). 

Now I will not pretend that I was involved in the constructing of the shed (although I did help with clearing the tress and bushes). Whilst my Dad and partner worked on the shed, my mum and I carried on with some painting of the front room and then spent an afternoon in the garden getting all our pots planted up for the summer. I wanted to add some colour to the garden but as with the shed we were on a budget. When we moved into this house in June last year the previous owner had left lots and lots of old pots and containers in the garden. As nothing but weeds grew in them last year we emptied them out (re-claiming any decent soil) and then re-potted them. I managed to get a really good deal on potting compost from The Range - two 50 litre Miracle Gro bags for just £7 (RRP of £12). I also got a good deal on bulbs from our local Wyvale Garden Centre - two bags of bulbs (40 in each) for £7.99. Now I am not much of a gardener, but with 15 pots planted up in total I hope we will at least have some that survive come the summer. I will report back in 3 months!