Gardening year: review and plan It usually takes a period of enforced inactivity - illness or bad weather perhaps - for gardeners to stop and contemplate their gardens, but the new year is just the right time to view progress, pat ourselves on the back or admit defeat. It's almost exactly a year to the day that I moved here from Suffolk, so I have extra encouragement to take stock, and I'm looking out from exactly the same viewpoint (my bedroom window) where I first studied this garden. There have obviously been changes, but because we gardeners always look forward and not back, brushing aside past efforts - however superhuman - we concentrate on the future. It's what keeps us all going. My plan was to divide the space (150ft x 50ft) into three: the part nearest the house to be dedicated to the good things in life - entertaining and small vegetable beds, herbs and plants in pots; the central plot turned into an orchard and wild-flower meadow with a chicken run; and the end bit left to wildlife and future grandchildren. All have come to fruition (including one grandchild) and although nothing is quite up to scratch - this is no instant makeover - the framework is there. Uppermost in my design was the determination not to lumber myself with too much work in the future. I admit it's heartbreaking not to contemplate beds of favourite perennials, to limit myself to a lawn that I can cut with a small cylinder mower, not to indulge my plant fantasies or show off. But I hope to keep myself in produce, kindling and eggs and to satisfy my need to grow those small seasonal special things that make life worth living: the first pot of bulbs, elderflower cordial, a home-laid egg or two, bowls of salad leaves, the perfect posy, fruit pickings and jars of preserves for the larder. I want my grandson to take his first steps on my tiny lawn, to be able to have family lunches on the terrace, for my sons to be able to indulge in hobbies in sheds and for wildlife to flourish (no foxes and magpies, please). A low-maintenance garden that doesn't mean I've given up. Looking out through my French windows, I can see our first success: the scaffolding-board-decked terrace made by my son Jacques that joins the house to the garden without bringing the garden into the house. I love just sitting on the warm wood in the summer, but the wet wood in winter needs care. To the left is the workshop my younger son Max has built to house his precious beach buggy and keep his sanity, neatly painted to co-ordinate with the rest of the garden. The small lawn for picnics surrounded by brick paths leads on to a herb and vegetable garden to the left and a seating area to the right, both artfully made by carpenter Martin Pammant and divided from the rest of the garden and the hens by a bay hedge, cordoned apples and a gateway leading to a mown path into the orchard, where thousands of bulbs are poised waiting. Like most of the east coast, I can blame the historic lack of rain for failures among the fruit trees, causing casualties like the medlar, a cherry and six cobnuts that just never broke into leaf. Despite having poured compost and grit into large holes with a snug covering of weed-suppressant matting and pebbles, it has been a difficult year for major planting, not helped by this garden's main drawback, the heavy clay soil. A lifetime of conditioning won't be enough. And I still have fence panels aplenty to clothe, some with climbers, some with painted wooden panelling, a few trompe l'oeil gates to suggest life beyond, and a barrier at the bottom of the orchard. Maybe a "fedge," a combination of hedge and fence made of poles containing branches too solid to compost and too weedy to burn. I need to diminish my bramble content and some of the shrubbery under the oak tree that dominates the space. My small front garden has been fenced using painted pickets of spaced roofing battens that offer a tiny sunny haven from the busy road that sweeps past the front of the house. We'll make a decorative paved apron around the front porch to house welcoming pot plants, flanked by a couple of small carpet beds of succulents. Nice to have plans and schemes to come. I love my new garden. More peaceful than I expected, it's not really a seaside garden. I can still grow a wide range of plants, despite the sea being just beyond the allotments and golf course, but it has a slightly holiday feel. This is an atmosphere which I hope to elaborate with style, but without creating a millstone for the future.