Evolution to a woodshed

When we first moved here the patio by our back door looked like this:

 

 

With a lot of clearance and pruning it changed to this (yeah, still messy but none the less better):

 

then this:

 

 

I always wanted a pergola and was quite chuffed that there was one here, complete with a mature rose. But having lived with it for several years I eventually realised that from a design point of view it was all wrong. The structure was built square to this house but the garden wall is at an acute angle. The result was that as you walked out of the back door your eye would be drawn into the wall not down the garden. It felt very enclosed and claustrophobic. Another issue was the shade,  this was already the shadiest part of our garden, the pergola just made this worse. The final nail in the coffin was that the mature rose is also rather vigorous. After just a month or two of having pruned the plant my partner (who is admittedly rather tall) would have difficulty walking through the area without getting attacked by stray fronds. So I made the decision that I never anticipated, remove the pergola.

 

 

This also had the convenient by product of providing wood to frame up a woodstore by the back door. Something we needed and made entirely of salvaged material from the garden. Whilst it's fairly large it isn't intrusive at all. Now I walk out of the back door, my eye bounces off the garden wall and swiftly moves onto the scene beyond. A massive improvement.