by Sarah Le-Fevre

Created on: November 08, 2009   Last Updated: December 03, 2009

The garden was small and gravelled over, but the house came at the right price and we needed to move. Our younger daughter was growing out of her Moses basket and would need her own space soon. We decided to forgo our dreams of growing our own vegetables, at least in the short term.

Every time I looked out of the kitchen window, I wished that we had waited just a bit longer, just in case. Then we came to a decision. It would mean a lot of work and careful planning in the space we had, but we could put in raised beds. It was the end of April by now, but if we hurried we could get something grown this season.

Having just moved house, money was tight, So we had to shop around. Finding wood that was inexpensive but not chemically treated took us a couple of days. Finding topsoil that was organic and of a suitable quality but wasn't over our budget kept us scouring the Internet for over a week. All the time the sowing season was ebbing away.

My elder daughter, Alice, had never been keen on gardening. Family days out in famous gardens or botanic collections left her cold. We could just about persuade her to go to Kew, but only because there was a kid's play area there. There was much planning and discussion of gardening techniques over that two weeks, but Alice appeared to be paying no attention at all. There was a short-lived interest in the sweet pea catalogue, but the lure of the games console proved too strong and sweet pea varieties remained unchosen.

A miscalculation on my part nearly resulted in our ordering seven tonnes of topsoil, when in fact we only required 0.7 tonne, but eventually everything was on its way to us and our little garden.

Simon and I cleared the gravel, pulled back the membrane underneath and discovered the most compacted and clayey soil I have ever seen or attempted to dig. It was Friday evening. A one tonne bag of topsoil was due to be dropped on our driveway the following morning. It couldn't stay for long because we shared the drive with our neighbour. The whole project had to be completed by Sunday because we were both back at work on Monday.

We were up into the night, just breaking the soil up enough to make it even slightly workable. A large bag of play sand found in the shed helped slightly, but it was still like trying to dig very stiff dough. Most of it seemed to be stuck to our tools or boots. It wasn't meant to be like this. When I had imagined this moment during the previous two weeks I had seen myself leaning

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