How does your garden grow

week 2

Clearly that isn't our garden. In fact, I'm less than convinced that it's anybody's garden. I presume it's somewhere between fantasy and an expression of some fantastic photoshop skills (other equally complicated image editing programs are available - try Gimp (although to 'gimp' probably doesn't work as a verb in the same way photoshop does, but I digress)).

When we bought our house in 2013, we did so for a few reasons - location; size (yeah, I know, it's not big enough just 6 years later); and the future potential to extend due to the wide frontage (house + attached double garage = large rear garden width). With this in mind, our current adventure to add 50+m² to our downstairs footprint was fine (albeit I like having a big garden - lots of space for the kids to play). When the builder who built the house decided they were going to sell off the buffer strip at the back of our house (between us and the nature reserve) it suddenly became even more interesting.

So, with a bit of neighbourly coordination, we secured the strip behind a few houses, and split the land between us into chunks that vaguely resembled the area behind our individual gardens. Easy. Then came the fun bit - the council weren't too happy about the builder selling off the land (to the extent where they sent an interesting letter to all residents before the auction of the land took place which to all intents and purposes was designed to 'scare us off' buying the plot). They were pretty clear that there would be no option to convert it to garden land and add it to our existing curtilage (which was clearly everyone's intent). Undeterred (and actually, just to stop anyone else snapping up 10m of wasteland behind our garden) we went ahead with the purchase anyway, and set about attempting to get the necessary planning to push our fence back.

Given that the extra land was designed as a buffer strip between the residential properties and the nature area, we expected to have to jump through a few hoops to get that strip converted or reduced. We had to procure an ecological survey to ensure that any change of use would have limited impact on the wildlife of the nature reserve, and that any treatment to the land (boundary fencing, for example) wouldn't adversely effect the look of the area (public footpaths run through the copse, which forms part of the nature reserve, and is directly adjacent to the buffer). Fortunately, we were able to secure the services of an 'environmental planning and forestry consultant' that was actually the preferred supplier of the same council when they were fighting inbound applications, and with their help (and a relatively small fee on our side), we produced a landscape appraisal which addressed all the concerns. Turns out there was limited impact on the wildlife; that with a fairly simple hedgerow we could treat the boundary in an acceptable manner; and that actually flipping the buffer strip to private ownership would likely result in a tidier, better kept space than leaving it wild.

With a few minor stipulations (and we think, much to their dismay - which will probably bite us when we put the planning application through for the house extension) the council approved the change of use application after about 6 months of to-ing and fro-ing. As a result our approximately 4m rear extension is now compensated for by about 10m of additional garden run. Result!