Making me smile.

A blogging friend Deb gave out a small challenge to tell everyone what is making you smile this week. Well for me its my garden which has been making me smile everyday since it was made over way back in April. In New Zealand we have a TV programme called "Mucking In", where a lucky recipient is nominated by someone from their community to have their garden made over. It is usually someone that gives a lot to the community and the community feels the need to repay them in some way. My husband was one of those people to be nominated. He organises an annual event called the "Beach hop" which celebrates the 50's and 60's era . It has grown to be a huge event that brings millions of dollars into not just our town of Whangamata but the whole of the Coromandel Peninsula and all the funds made from it go to charity's to do with water safety since we live on the coast. It is a fun event that people look forward to every year and travel from as far away as the States and Australia to attend.

Because I do all the gardening I was let in on the secret a couple of weeks before my husband was surprised. It was very tricky keeping it a secret from him and also our girls. I was generally quite happy with the way our garden originally looked but I'm no garden designer and there was a lot of people wanting to thank Noddy for his efforts so I agreed to have it made over. The "Mucking In" team then come in to town and surprise the recipient and they are then sent away for the weekend along with their partner while the community and local business band together and majorly make over your garden. I'm talking diggers and truck loads of garden supplies here.

The programme screened here last Sunday the 18th October but can be viewed again on TVNZ's website. Here's the link. The programme is only available for New Zealand citizens to watch but you can still read all about our garden and why Noddy was nominated on the website here plus they have a few more photos. Our garden is now absolutely beautiful and the new "hot tub" is getting a lot of use! Everyone did an amazing job in just 3 days.

So here is a photo of the front of our property. You can just see the shade sail they put up so my husband Noddy can clean his beloved classic cars out of the sun. I don't have a before photo but we used to have a fence across the front with a perennial garden. They saved some of my roses and replanted them elsewhere.

This is a before shot of the back/side of our garden.

And this is what it looks like now.

These are the old back steps.

And these are our new back steps with stepping stones that lead further down to the redwood trees that border our property out the back.

Another view of the back of our property before the make over.

Our new boardwalk leading to our new hot tub. To the right of this photo are the big redwood trees.

Another before shot.

And this is what it looks like now.

And a couple more photos taken from our deck. Hope you enjoyed my little photo tour of our new garden that we are very proud of.