The Great Outdoor Living Event – Inspirational Summer Garden Tour

Welcome to “The Great Outdoor Living Event – Summer Garden Tour” If you are looking for a little summer inspiration for your garden and patio area then you have come to the right place!

8 super stylish and creative home decor bloggers ( and little old me 🙂 ) have opened up our garden gates to let you take a snooch around and soak up some inspiration.

Here is how the garden tour blog hop works:

Once you have finished reading this post you will find the next blog in the garden tour at the bottom of the page.

Click through to see their garden, then click the link at the end of their post, and so on.  If you keep clicking you should come back in a full circle to me!

I’m absolutely certain you will enjoy this.

I love the fact that we all have very different styles and that you can find oodles of different ideas and lots of handy tips.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links which I think you may find useful – any purchases made via these links provides a small commission to me at no extra cost to you. This helps me keep the blog up and running.

Well, despite the atrocious weather the last few days I have been super busy working in the garden and adding the finishing touches to get it ready for this Summer Garden Tour.

So, without further ado.  Follow me and let’s get started on this tour!

Since moving to our house in 2011, I have to admit, that we actually destroyed our garden.

Bit by bit we removed overgrown trees, bushes, and a huge pond.

Finally, last year we got around to having a new patio laid to make it functional again.

If I’m honest, I would totally love a huge back garden.  A garden with lots of trees, grass, and interesting features but alas, it is what it is.  A small garden!

Because our garden is pretty small, space is very valuable and I have tried to use it wisely and create a feeling of space.

So, as you can see the garden was a real mess

There was a gaping hole after removing the pond, so we just filled it in with some second-hand paving blocks.  This was always meant to be a temporary solution but it took us 3 1/2 years to replace them.

I was truly sick of the sight of them!

We also had a really lovely lilac tree at the bottom of the garden but with a lot of persuasion from my other half and a heavy heart we removed the trees to make way for the kid’s trampoline.

The trampoline is one thing I can honestly say that I won’t be sad to see the back of.  But for now, the kids love it and use it so much it has to stay.  I’m looking forward to replacing in with some kind of pergola once the kids have outgrown it.

Updating The Fence & Patio

We repainted the fence with a grey/green semi-transparent colour wood stain.  I wasn’t sure whether this would look ok on old previously stained fence panels but I cleaned and sanded them well and I think turned out quite nice.

For the patio, we chose a grey tile with a slight colour ripple running through and a contrasting buff coloured blocks for the raised beds.

I loved the Buxus topiary ball bushes and the rhododendron bush so I decided to keep these and built the raised bed around them.

On the opposite side of the garden, the border is a little narrower.

So far I have added a few bushes and bedding plants but this is a work in progress.

With regard to a colour scheme, you can see from the photos that I am using a selection of white, pink, purple, and blue which I think contrasts nicely against all the grey.

Going For A Song

I really love this table and chair set that I found going for a song at a local DIY store.

It was reduced down to a ridiculous price. As we were paying for it, the lady went on to tell us that they had accidentally labelled it as a  much cheaper model.

Luckily for us, the lady was really nice and said that we were allowed to buy it for the price it was marked up at.

You can’t see it in the photos but our lounge set has seen better days so it desperately needs replacing.

When I get round to replacing it I would actually like a better quality one next time around.

We will probably wait and buy one at the end of the season when the shops reduce all garden furniture.

This is my new favourite tray for serving drinks to our guests.

If you are a regular visitor to the blog you will probably recognise this tray from my last DIY upcycle post.

You can find the DIY Tutorial and details about the free printable pattern paper here –> DIY Tray Makeover Tutorial

Kringloop (Charity/Thrift Shop) Finds

This little chalkboard was a kringloop (charity/thrift shop) find.  It was only 50ct!  Bargain!

DIY Log Store

The log store was a DIY effort that my hubby and brother-in-law made using lengths of wood and reclaimed roof tiles.

It’s a shame the log store was nearly empty when I took these photos as I think it makes a really nice feature when it is full of wood.

Butler Tray Table Display

And this Butler Tray Table was another charity shop find.  At €5 it would have been mad to leave without it.

I have a load of these big river pebbles leftover from when the garden had a pond so I added a few to the top of the tray to add a little interest.

Oh yes, and whilst we are talking about the “kringloop” the hearts, a lot of the baskets, and the candleholders were also charity shop finds.

So, now you have seen our little garden make sure you follow through and check out everyone else’s gorgeous gardens.

The next stop on “The Great Outdoor Living Event – Summer Garden Tour” Blog Hop is with Sarah over at The Project Pile

Semigloss Design | Jenron Designs | Eclectic Twist | A Happy Home in Holland | The Project Pile

House by the Bay Design | Red House Style | Pearl Street Designs | Momma Can

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