The first picture was taken in winter soon after I moved in, around 28 years ago. The house was then about 10 years old and had had two owners. One of them had landscaped the garden with a round lawn, 2 each of 4 varieties of tree and the then ubiquitous leylandii hedge.
It took a year or two, but in the next picture the last of the lawn is being dug up and some pretty extensive planting has been going on. There's a pond and a polytunnel. Much of the paving has gone, what is left has been upgraded. Except for the hedge and maybe one shrub, nothing remains of the earlier planting.
Now lets roll forward almost quarter of a century. I can see only two of the earlier plants still remaining, the bamboo in bottom left and the Carex beside it. The wall is still there but hidden and the circle shape is still present in the recently laid paving. I still have my fork, though it has been re-shafted. The hedge is a distant memory. Trees have grown large and gone.
Did I plan for it to look like this now? Of course not. To look more than a year or two ahead is to look into complete uncertainty. What will do well, how fast things will grow, what will die or be removed; these are unknowns, and gardening is much the more interesting for it.
Next picture I take I'm going to stand there again and strike that same pose. See if I haven't changed a whole lot less than the garden.
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