What Chatterton Road looks like now . . .

There's no getting around it. our road looks very grey. There's lots of concrete pavement and there's uneven tarmac that's not been re-done for twenty years. We tend to use the front garden for the dustbins, perhaps a hedge around, very occasionally a few bushes and very very occasionally flowers in pots, or vegetables or a rose-bush.

We COULD liven the place up with rampant wildflowers, nasturtiums in high summer, spring bulbs like daffodils and crocuses now, or geraniums and lavender in April or so.

I'm sure we'll get on to that in a few weeks, once we overcome the immediate drawbacks.

This is what Chatterton Road looks like today; our pavements are the old four feet wide, and there's brick edges next to the kerb that is another two feet wide.

The brick edging is where the trees and lampposts and street signs are placed, so we've only got about 1.2 metres max. to walk along. That's just enough width to push a pram or a wheel chair, or for two people to pass. If the hedge sticks over, that makes it uncomfortable to get by, especially with the high kerbs and all the parked cars usually end-to-end in our road.

 Just like a hundred or a thousand other streets near here, I imagine . . .

We have about seventy tiny front gardens and about thirty-one trees of varying ages. It is a typical small urban road.

Top of Chatterton Road looking west, pay parking for ten cars. The rest of the road is permit parking for residents.

in Chatterton Mews looking North to our road

Visitors' pay parking near Blackstock Road end. Cars come and go here all day long, often staying for a half-hour or less.

unadopted private mews, very limited greenery in sight but five front doors here down the mews

A very nice front garden even in winter, and it has netting to keep plants safe

Hedge is creeping towards the lamp-post

One of our mature trees, hard concrete around  tree base. Some of the paving slabs are raised and uneven.

One of our brand-new trees, soil surround to base with watering and fertiliser tube installed

Lovely hedges at Plimsoll Road end looking East, but no plants and just one mature tree