Reveries of a Craftsy Garden Reader: Our little organic garden

We live in a terraced house, with a very small garden plot at the back. We would absolutely love a big garden, but as the Netherlands is a very small country with 17 million people, we have to make do with what we have (at least, as long as we stay here :) ).

In January 2011, I started dreaming of turning our tiny overgrown garden into a organic vegetable & wildlife garden. Living in a new development area in the polders of Zuid-Holland, there isn't much wildlife here to welcome into our garden. Therefore we focus on butterflies, bees and birds. As to vegetable gardening, I soon learned about crop rotation, which is usually done with 6 plots. As our garden is very small, we had to compromise and I opted for 4 plots in stead. It just means that we will not be growing every kind of crop each year.

Our garden is organic, which means that we do not use man-made stuff like pesticides and synthetic fertilizer in our garden. We let nature do the job, by using crop rotation, attracting insects, using and making our own compost, companion planting and such.

After a lot of hard work, removing the overgrown grass and shrubs, cultivating our clay ground by hand, burning plants that wouldn't come out, digging paths, the garden was starting to take form. You can see the evolution of our garden in the pictures below. I hope that people get inspired by this. With a plenty of willpower, lot's of ideas and a little work, you can turn your depressing garden into a colourful paradise! :)

Evolution of our garden: