GINA PARKINSON is drawing up grand designs for her small town garden.

THIS time last year, builders moved into our house and garden at the start of six months of renovation.

Part of the garden was lost - my lovely sunny bed filled with delphiniums and roses - and the rest disappeared temporarily under ladders, buckets, piles of wood and other building paraphernalia.

The chaos seems a long time ago and, with spring here, I am itching to be outside. As the house is completed and more or less decorated, it has to take second place to the garden; work began in the showery rain a couple of Sundays ago.

We have a small town garden divided into three sections, a yard by the house, the garden area and a section of hard standing at the bottom, where a large shed stood. We had this removed last year and replaced it with a smaller wooden one, which makes the garden feel much longer.

The yard is the typical long area found outside Victorian or Edwardian terraced housing. Measuring nine metres (27 feet) in length and 2.20 metres (seven feet) wide, it is south facing and gets the sun for much of the day in summer. It is wide enough to house a number of pots and containers, although I try to limit these as it can quickly look messy and overcrowded.

The yard is also home to two guinea pigs, who greet us loudly every time we open the kitchen door.

The yard is covered in concrete, which will be eventually removed; although we plan to do most of the work in the garden ourselves, we have decided that this job will be left to someone with the right tools and the means to dispose of the rubble.

This area leads into the garden, which will have a long border linking the two sections as well as a small lawn, path to the shed and gate and another flower bed. This total area is 6.25 metres (21 feet) long and 4.6 metres (14 feet 10 ins) wide, with the wide border down the whole of one side.

Part of this border is already planted and some plants will stay but most will be moved and replanted with roses, new perennials and some climbers.

It is often stated that small gardens shouldn't have a lawn and we had intended to do away with ours. However, we hadn't reckoned with our ten-year-old daughter, who pointed out that she needs grass to practice her handstands and dance moves, as well as entertaining the guinea pigs in the summer. So the lawn was reinstated and will be about 2.5 metres square and in the sunniest part of the garden.

The final section of our plot is another area of concrete on which we have the shed and bags of rubbish waiting to go to the local refuse site. There is a high brick wall at the bottom on which climbers can be grown and the concrete will either be broken up and replaced with paving or left and have tiles put on top. This area is three metres (10 feet) long and 4.6 metres (14 feet 10 ins) wide.

Now we just need a spell of fine weather for the work to continue.

Updated: 10:35 Saturday, March 27, 2004