Knowing nothing about landscape design, we employed the services of a landscape architect who did.  We had just a few ideas:

The driver of this dumper truck might look rather familiar

Large Readymix lorry and concrete pump in action. The second cement mixer arrived just after this picture was taken

Pouring the concrete

The wooden shuttering stops the concrete from the upper pond flowing into the lower.

Lower block work now in place. Took Kevin 4 days to build this. 

The boat and lockgates installed.  The lockgates are only decorative - the water is held back by a 9 inch block wall

Once the concrete was poured, the next step was to build the edging walls to contain the water.  Below ground, the walls are concrete blocks; where visible, English Bond Brickwork has been used.

The boat and lock gates were built by people whose day job is building sets for the local theatres, Ben and Jim.  Jim lives on a boat (actually a Humber Keel barge, moored near Southampton) and so is very familiar with the boating scene.  The roses on the boat were painted by Jim's wife.  Canalcoholics will guess that Jim's wife's name is inevitably Rosie.  How appropriate.

Either the boat was a bit late, or the fencing was done a bit early - but getting the boat into the garden was a bit of a challenge.  The only way was over the rear fence, a metre high wire and hurdle fencing and a beech hedge.  And this meant going through the neighbour's garden.  Permission was duly sought and granted, and a 7 tonne flatbed hired to get the boat and lock gates from Southampton to Swanmore.  Having a daughter at agricultural college proved advantageous and so a  group of her friends were pressed as volunteer labour.

Meanwhile, the rest of the hard landscaping was to be constructed.  This included a courtyard walled garden, copious amounts of paving and raised beds, constructed from railway sleepers.  At least, they were going to be railway sleepers, but the Foot and Mouth crisis put paid to that (old railway sleepers are ideal fuel for the pyres used to dispose of the animal carcasses.  Yuck). 

A minor change of plan and we used new, pressure treated and painted softwood to create the planters.  About 10 tonnes of wood was used and built, professionally over a two week period.

The walls for the courtyard went up and the paving went down.  The base and dwarf walls for the conservatory were built, finally the glass and roof for the conservatory were installed.  We were beginning to get a garden.

The conservatory just after completion.  This is positioned in front of the French windows seen in the third of the "in the beginning" pictures.

More of the same, a little later in the year looking towards the conservatory from the woodland garden towards the house.  The sleeper beds are under construction

Paul Bradley at work pointing the courtyard wall. This is in the area close to the post and rail fence shown in the original pictures. The base for the conservatory can be seen

The courtyard wall, seen from the front.  The wall here is curved and the beams in the "windows" are reclaimed oak from a demolished barn

 
The raised bed planters under construction

Most of the hard landscaping is nearing completion.  The paving around the house is being finished and the steps up to the main patio are being built.  The sign by the "canal" is a reproduction of a Grand Union Canal milepost, telling us that we are 117 miles from Braunston

Along the way, we'd had some issues with the planning office.  The boundary treatment had been specified in the planning consent and it was made a condition of the building proceeding that the developer carry out certain actions in a particular manner and at specific times during the development.  Needless to say, this didn't take place and so the wrath of the enforcement team was incurred.  We agreed with the developer that we'd take on the boundary treatment in return for a "consideration" (£500) that was conveniently forgotten about.

The courtyard wall was a going to be a bit of a sticking point.  Planning legislation states that a garden wall must not exceed 1 metre where it is adjacent to a highway.  If we wanted our 2 metre high wall (to block out the view of the pub opposite), we would need to apply for planning consent.  And we were told that we would not have it granted.  It's rather pleasant living so close to a pub, but you don't necessarily want to look at the car park all the time.  It was suggested that we plant a hedge adjacent to the highway and so, this is what we have done.  Meanwhile, we continued with the building of a 1 metre high wall to the courtyard along the side that is parallel with the road.

At the same time, we submitted a request to amend the boundary treatment, now showing the hedge with the courtyard wall behind it.  We were told that once the hedge was established and was the boundary, we could build our 2 m wall as it would no longer be adjacent to the highway.  So we planted a tall hedge.  Not that it mattered - the planning officer allowed the wall to be built in any case.  Sounds like a case of administrative bi-dexterous dysfunction.

Oh, yes - we had to bring some topsoil back into the garden.  Can't remember exactly how much, but something like 40 tonnes of ordinary graded soil, 10 tonnes of "supersoil" and 20 tonnes of bark mulch.  

 
Awaiting planting

 
The canal water feature completed and in operation, awaiting only stocking with fish

Sitting on the deck of the boat looking towards the house

 
The reverse of the first picture in this section, taken from the stone circle and looking towards the "boat"

This will be the "orchard" in a couple of years. The view is the inverse of the second shot in this series

Taken from the same location as one of the earlier pictures

Finally, a large planted border

Well - that was the plan.  The weather this year has varied between deluge and drought and so the plans were amended a little.   The fruit trees went in between Christmas and New Year, as did a vast amount of bulbs (a bit late) - 150 kgs of ornamental daffs and 500 each native daffs and cultivated bluebells (with cerstificates of origin to show that they were not dug out of the woods).

The ornamental and boundary trees went in and the daffs sprouted rather quickly.  That caused a rethink on turfing the "orchard" resulting in it being part turfed and part seeded.  Interestingly, another name for grass and wild flower mixture seed is "bird food".

The final act of planting was the ornamental lawn.  It had rained so much the previous week that we had considered buying in 10 tonnes of grit to lay the turf onto.  Fortuitously, the rain stopped and the turf went down.  Then we had 5 weeks of drought.  As the pictures show, it all survived