Dani did you lay the turf yourself? May be worth thinking of doing that instead...seeding takes such a long time..to be honest you would be lucky to let them on it for a decent play this year.
You can pick up turf quite cheap if you are prpepared to lay it yourself. We did ours right at the back and it didn't take long. Had Alan Titchmarsh's book at our side and off we went....
We have reseeded bits and its taken an age for it to be play worthy.

You have a lovely size/shape of garden!

Have to admit weput chipped bark down for a climbing frame etc when my son was a bit younger and it was an absolute pain. The dogs tried to eat it, weeds came through the stuff after a while and my son hated walking on it, he is like his mum and doesn't really like shoes! I'm not convinced it provided a much softer landing either.....

Magnolias are sooooooo lovely, I also love lavenders....
We don't have time to do a lot in the garden but have adopted a bit of a wildlife approach. One persons weed is another persons wildflower!

Someone told me ages ago that a perfect kids garden should include some water (to encourage birds etc), somewhere for the children to grow something to eat, somewhere for insect attracting plants, somewhere for birds/animals, some sort of shelter to play in and of course a grassed area (I'm sure thats what they said!!!!!!) Made sense anyway.

It is hard doing a kid and dog friendly garden, we have tried so many things...have almost given up now though as my son and Cosmo have taken to playing football.....still at least it means at the moment I always have a vase of freshly stomped upon (sorry 'cut') daffodils!!!!!! I would love a beautiful garden.......I shall watch this thread with real interest.


Blimey I've gone on....can you tell the sunshine has been inspiring me?!!!!!!!!

hiya, no we had the turf laid so i suppose a fair chunk of that was labour, and they had to prepare the ground etc... it just with the extension we had to dig alot of it up, and then we werent able to get to the lawn to mow it or treat it as it was surrounded by an open drainage/sewer pipes trench for nearly 2 years !!! thats why its in suc a mess, as Bruno doesnt dig etc so its only his poop and pee thats wrecked it from his point of view.

will look into turf prices again.

we also have a balcony as you can see so I planned to grow strawberries on the balcony as its lovely and sunny up there and luca adores them and could eat a whole punnet in one go ( and has !!)

I wanted to plant within the decking, some herbs and maybe wild rocket as i use them for cooking alot.

we also have a brick wall which runs right along the right hand side which I planned to take a section of and paint it white and do a nice mural on it, smiley sun etc for luca's area with climbing frame. We have some bark already that bruno hasnt eaten... he prefers actual wood blocks ( he will probably end up chewing the decking )

anyway going to get on with this plan !!

Ooooo I love Buddleia too!!!!