Our homes have been so much more than homes in 2020. We’ve worked from them, exercised in them and stood outside them and clapped the NHS. We’ve put our children’s drawings of rainbows in our windows and shared doorstep drinks with our neighbours. We’ve cleared out cupboards, painted walls and grown our own vegetables. In this series of blogs, we celebrate some of the ways our homes have helped us through the year – even if it wasn’t quite the year we were planning.

A garden to bring me joy

As soon as the first lockdown was relaxed in England, five friends and I agreed we would have morale-boosting drinks outside every Saturday evening. It struck me then that my tiny garden was totally devoid of charm. I love my home and spending the lockdowns here has been no hardship. But the garden is another matter. 'Does it bring you joy?' a garden designer friend asked. It didn’t.

Great swathes of dark green ivy and trachelospermum were thuggishly pulling down two of the ancient fences; exhausted shrubs and perennials were being choked by rampant campanula, while a climbing rose shot up over the only decent fence and bloomed prettily in nextdoor’s oleander.

Project Garden, I decided, would be just the thing to get me through, whatever the restrictions.

I started with the foliage, which filled 12 black bin bags. As the bin men in my borough are only allowed to take five bags of garden refuse at a time, it took three weeks to get rid of them (during the first lockdown some of my neighbours wrote thank you notes to the bin men for being frontline workers, which, I admit, I didn’t get around to doing).

Next, with the cheering news that the council’s recycling centre had reopened, I took down two of the fences, chopped them up into bag-sized pieces and loaded them into the car. I could only do this on clement days as the bags had to be carried through the house, over pristine carpets. It rained a lot this year.

We were now in lockdown 2.0 but under the new rules I was allowed to have new fences delivered and fitted. Next I attacked the two raised beds. It took a week to dig out all the old plants and their tenacious roots and dig in four large bags of compost. Another trip to the recycling centre – which remained open in lockdown 2.0 – to get rid of several more bags of garden refuse which the bin men were now pretending not to see (perhaps I should have written that thank you note).

Pandemic – what pandemic? I’m far too busy looking for planting ideas on the RHS website, bombarding my garden designer friend with texts and Googling ‘stylish garden furniture’. One day – in lockdown 3.0 perhaps – I’m hoping my garden will bring me as much joy as my home does. MO, London

Further information

This series of blogs is inspired by Savills new advertising campaign, To Every Home That's Been So Much More Than A Home – Thank You and Merry Christmas. Over the next few weeks a selection of guest bloggers will reveal just how much their homes have meant to them this year.