23-05-2025
How I turned a drab garden into the perfect hosting space
Jess Alavi-Ellis had only ever been a balcony gardener until she moved to a house in north London with a 98ft-long garden. 'I'd really wanted to grow stuff, but had struggled to keep things alive,' admits the journalist and designer. The outside space she inherited was severely neglected; half concrete, half dumping ground, it was the ideal blank slate for her to start from scratch and give gardening a serious go.
A keen traveller, she wanted to bring in Mediterranean influences to create a holiday feel in the suburbs. But with a gut renovation and a costly kitchen extension under way in the house, she and her husband Darius had to roll up their sleeves in order to make over the space.
Five years on, it's now a lush retreat that's perfect for entertaining, with a games area and multiple spots for al fresco eating; and it also provides an abundance of fresh produce for the family to eat. Here, Alavi-Ellis explains how the transformation took place.
Plotting, levelling and making good
'The garden is long and thin, but it feels really big for London and I feel so lucky to have it,' says Alavi-Ellis. She decided straight away not to entertain the idea of a lawn: 'We didn't want the maintenance of mowing and thought we could do something else.'
Removing the concrete was a must, but a Herculean task, so she took advantage of having builders on site while the house renovation was being done, and paid them to break it up and remove it. She then hired a rotavator and spent a month clearing and levelling the land as much as possible.
The self-build shed
One of the first things the couple did was build a shed – from scratch. It started with a set of uPVC doors which someone locally was giving away, and which Alavi-Ellis spray-painted black. They bought a pair of cheap windows, bags of concrete, and timber from a local yard, and set about erecting what is more akin to a garden office.
'Before this renovation, my husband would go on [home services marketplace] TaskRabbit to find someone to put up a shelf,' laughs Alavi-Ellis, 'but out of a financial necessity we watched YouTube videos and learnt to do all sorts of stuff.' The shed is watertight, provides invaluable storage space and cost around £4,000 in materials, compared with the tens of thousands an off-the-peg design would have cost.
The fun factor
'We love playing petanque on holidays in France and so we thought having our own court would be really fun,' says Alavi-Ellis. Actually creating the court, or piste, was less fun, however: 'It was a huge undertaking because we had to dig out drainage so that it wouldn't flood, as that area was quite waterlogged.'
The piste required varying sizes of gravel, and as there is no side access through the Victorian terrace house, it meant bringing 18 tons of the stuff through the house. 'We roped in friends, asking them to come and help us move it in return for a barbecue and a beer,' she laughs. A petrol-powered vibrating plate and a roller were rented to finish the piste off. Alavi-Ellis now has two small children and sometimes questions the lack of lawn in the garden, but her four-year-old enjoys biking up the gravel and has her own mini set of boules. 'We often play together as a family and I love that,' she says.
The cooking and dining area
Making use of the builders once more, Alavi-Ellis specified a bench, fire pit and kitchen-style island, built out of breeze blocks, to create a convivial area for eating and relaxing. She estimates the cost for all three was around £1,500. The bench was rendered and Alavi-Ellis painted it using leftover limewash from the kitchen walls.
But it wasn't comfortable, so she had seat pads and cushions made using a bespoke striped fabric from Colours of Arley. 'I used yacht foam for the inners, which I ordered online and had cut to size; that way it's not the end of the world if they get left outside in the rain,' she explains. Installing the terrazzo tiles from Otto Tiles on the island was a memorable job undertaken with her dad, Mike.
'In four years I've never had to jet-wash it as, amazingly, the grout has stayed green,' she says. There's space for three bar stools on each side, so she uses it to serve food from the nearby barbecue, or to position a portable pizza oven away from small hands.
The sunshade
Realising just how much of a sun trap the south-west-facing seating area was, Alavi-Ellis later added a pergola. 'I wanted it to feel like Greece or Italy, where there are always vines growing around something,' she explains. She opted for a simple square arch, and trailing around it are vines probably put in by the previous owners, who were of Greek-Cypriot heritage.
'It makes the most out of something which was once lovingly planted, and we get early flowers followed by grapes which hang down,' she says. She also has future designs on a 'really comfy sofa or rocking chair' for sinking into on the patio.
The planting
Alavi-Ellis is a member of her local garden centre, The Gardening Club in Crews Hill, Enfield, which gets her discounted prices off the already inexpensive plants. 'It's a garden centre dream, and a fraction of the price of most London garden centres,' she says. She sweated her plant budget by buying perennials early in the spring that would look pretty and bulk out quickly, such as Geum 'Totally Tangerine', quick-growing Verbena bonariensis, Sambucus nigra and lots of grasses.
To complement the existing apple and fig trees, she bought an almond tree for £60: 'It has a lovely blossom, but the squirrels mostly steal the almonds.' A fern tree was the single largest investment, 'but I love it, and it's already come on quite a lot', says Alavi-Ellis.
The book A Year Full of Flowers by Sarah Raven became Alavi-Ellis's springboard for what to plant to create a wild, naturalistic look with flowers spilling over the borders. A 'bulb lasagne' in raised beds yields narcissi and alliums, which Alavi-Ellis likes to cut and bring inside. She also has a small cold frame on the patio where she grows cosmos, sweet peas and scabiosa cheaply from seed. 'My daughter really loves flowers and she's often out in the garden with her own scissors, picking herself a bunch,' she says.
The veg patch
The raised beds provide the family with fruits such as gooseberries, raspberries, whitecurrants and rhubarb. In raised metal beds on the patio (from £150, Harrod Horticultural), the family grow 'instant gratification' produce such as courgettes, climbing beans, strawberries and rainbow chard, which get regularly picked and eaten.
Alavi-Ellis now counsels friends seeking gardening and plant advice, 'which is always a shock to me, but I've learnt so much', she says. A sanctuary fit for entertaining in warm weather, the garden also acts as a mood-booster on the greyest of winter days: 'Seeing the pink of the bench and the green island from the kitchen always reminds me of being on holiday.'
