Ants In Wales

What's worse than viewing property in a snow storm? Coming away with the idea that it has a lovely smooth back lawn.

Back in the snows of December we bought a property. Inside it was a bit tired, but generally sound. Outside a lovely smooth blanket of snow spread across the back garden. It was a quiet, tidy and peaceful scene. We came home happy.

We checked the property again on a clear day. The smooth back garden of memory had transformed itself into a lumpy bumpy collection of once-useful things. Bicycles, blocks (concrete), timber, flat-packed gabion cages, a chiminea (rusty) and a series of unidentified clumps with winter grass growing through, over and around them.

Clearly there was work to do.

Now that the purchase has completed, the property needs a tenant so it can start paying its way. But before anyone will want to live there we must restore the garden, tidy up and decorate inside the house.

This is a perfect Ant Fund project: short time-scale, clear goal, precise brief - and it will generate income. The property will be worth more too, once the work is completed.

Funding this sort of light refurbishment through traditional lenders is an increasingly distant memory of form-filling discouragement. With the Ant Fund standing by to help it's a calm, quick process.

Next week we'll tell you about Ants on the other side of the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, if you want to be part of the Ant Fund, the next intake is the 1st of June.