The garden centre Easter Bunny

This was our garden when we moved in over eighteen months ago:This was it in May last year with our wigwam for beans and the other 3 veg plots
and this is how it was when my SIL visited last month
All very green and flat, though the clematis is flourishing and full of buds so will be a picture in a matter of weeks.

From the builders merchants today, we went to the garden centre.
We had a plan, well sort of, as to what we wanted to try and attract the birds in by giving them somewhere to sit.
The soil here is clay based, so obviously not ‘just any’ plant will grow here. There were some lovely bushes but they needed sandy or peat soil, so we passed on those and went outside to look at trees.
A bit more pricey, but they were well established so we came away with four miniature conifers which we know from past experience grow anywhere and if trimmed regularly will make a nice bushy haven for small birds, and a large chinese privet (and pot), plus a growbag and 60 litre bag of compost mix.

We have a small car. A tiny car, dinky even.
The growbag, compost and conifers were a doddle to get in of course, but even with half the back seat down, the privet was a fighter. We had realised that it wouldn’t fit in (easily), but not to the extent of how much, and with me banished to the front seat as I couldn’t help and was only getting in the way, the boot door was propped up with walking sticks (always useful) and everything held in place with a lorry strap, trussing it up like a turkey.
We had about three feet of foliage sticking out of the back, a dog perched precariously ‘just so’ in order to avoid being kebabbed by a conifer, and on the way home some bloody idiot driving so close he probably wanted to cock his leg on our tree!

We got home without mishap though, and only one broken shoot, which I shoved into some rooting powder and some decent compost in a pot and hope to get a baby sapling.
We’ve put the little conifers at the bottom of the garden in the patch where we’d put some marigolds (which leapt into my arms from the hedgerow one evening) and where Hubby has been tipping the excess soil from wherever he’s been digging at the time.
The privet has gone behind our apple tree which is coming into its own with blossom, albeit very miniscule just now, but blossom nonetheless.
This is how we look now: