We started with this in the seventies. It was really just a token as we had small kids and the garden was for them. The retractable sun blind I made as our garden is South-facing. I also built the "rabbit shed" on the back of the garage for our daughter's several rabbits and guinea pigs. She bought her last at fourteen, she left home at eighteen to train at GOS as a nurse. Her last rabbit lived for another eight years! The rabbit shed has been a work room come gardening store since then.
This came in 1985. An eighteen inch deep goldfish pond. Only one child still at home and she was now eighteen. That was quite a bit of work as I ripped up the tarazzo patio and replaced it with York stone which I used for the path next to the pool and for the patio and path behind the shed. I built the two Japanese lamps in the evenings after work.
Which I converted to a koi pool the following year.
The tea-house came in 1987 and the six ft pagoda. That I built spending a couple of hours on it each evening after work during the course of a week..
I used to get six weeks holiday a year so we went away for two weeks and the other four I used in blocks of two for "projects" either in the house or the garden. We used to decide that at the begining of the year.
The planting just got added to every year, with several changes and stuff moved about. We're still adding.
I'm in to labour saving. The lawn is edged by the paths and a row of pavers, so it's a quick wizz over with a Flymo. No "edging."
I've a leaky hose system that runs around the whole of the left side of the garden, split into three sections by three way valves, so I can water any combination of the three. I've a mechanical water meter with which you can set the "leak" for different gallonages and it turns itself off when the jobs done.
For watering the lawn, I have these. It cost me about fifty quid to install four years ago. You can adjust the heads so you can cut out a quadrant, like I have that keeps the water off the tea-house.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIx72a66TfY
Hedgehogs are getting quite scarce now, but we live on the inside of a "U shaped" crescent and all the gardens are about 90ft long, so collectively there's a lot of enclosed areas where they can forage for food. As it's such a large area, we get a lot of birds. In every garden video I make you can always hear the blackbirds.