Helen's Garden Renovation Project

Renovation has been proceeding at a slow pace since January, partly because I have had a heavy workload in my paid jobs, and partly because there’s not much left to do. The garden, however, has been setting its own pace. This is what the newly sown lawn looks like now:

Diagonal Lawn

The lawn still has bare patches in it, partly because of animals digging it up in the night, and partly because of the stupid lawn seed packet which quoted a coverage for reseeding over an existing lawn, rather than for making a lawn from scratch. But it’s coming along.

This is the right hand side of the garden. I haven’t finished the planting, but the things I planted in March are establishing well. The big test of the alpines will be how they do over winter – whether it will be too wet for them. The stepping stones are splattered with soil thrown up by a female blackbird digging for worms. As I’d hoped, I get to see a lot of birds visiting the octagonal pond while I’m doing the washing up.

Right hand side

Here are the raised and shallow ponds. Neither is having much trouble with green slime. They have both been given watercress and a barley log. The octagonal pond, which has just had a barley log and no watercress, has lots of green slime. Given that the watercress didn’t do anything helpful before I put the barley logs in, this suggests that both measures are needed. Or alternatively, that watercress would work on its own if I put more in, or barley logs would work on their own if I put more in, or that whichever measure I apply needs to be given more time to do the job. Whatever. I’m just glad that 67% of my ponds are slime-free at the moment.

Raised and shallow ponds

The left hand side of the garden is getting very enthusiastic. Perhaps too enthusiastic.

Left hand side

And finally, Percy is flowering his heart out. I’m not sure that a creamy-beige flowered rhododendron is such a good idea because that’s the colour my very early-flowering rhododendron goes when the frost gets it. But full marks to Percy for effort and flamboyance.

Rhododendron Percy Wiseman

Today was the fifth anniversary of Dave’s death, and I planted another rhododendron.

Rhododendron yakushimanum Percy Wiseman

The stone ornament to go with it is another frog. This will be the final commemorative planting, unless one of the previously planted rhododendrons dies, because next year there will be no more garden left to plant in.

It was a very sunny morning, and I took a walk around the garden. I thought next door’s fencing man had killed off my Dicentra, but a few weeks ago I discovered that it had come up again, and now it’s about to flower. I also thought that my thyme and phlox had died during the winter, but leaves are appearing. Neither plant is looking enthusiastic at the prospect of another growing season, but a couple of weeks may make all the difference. If Dave had been here today and I had been showing him the garden, he would have endured the tour patiently, but all he would have been interested would have been the ponds.

I’ve had some time off work, and the weather has been most suitable for going out and getting some vitamin D. I also went out and got some more plants from Whitewater Nursery, particularly ground cover. I chose some saxifraga, because I have been very successful with London Pride, and also some arabis, because the white variety given to me by my friend Sharon 18 years ago is still going strong. I bought some arenaria montana too. I hadn’t heard of it before, but it looked like it was game enough. Although these are all rock plants, and maybe shouldn’t be planted too near a pond, I have sandy soil and therefore good drainage. I will just have to see how they get on. I thought I would be able to split all the plants into two before planting, but actually only the saxifraga was easily splittable. If they survive a year, I can split them then.

I have left the compost bags over the bare soil, mainly to keep the cats and foxes off, but also to prevent weeds growing until I can fill in the gaps. I was pleased to be able to find a space for my hibiscus Blue Bird. It’s the bare-branched shrub at the right hand side, in front of the blackberry frame. I think it will get enough sun there.

Right hand side of garden, partially planted

I removed the branches I had strewn over the new lawn (the branches were there to deter animals from digging the lawn up) and the lawn looks quite convincing now.

New lawn

I haven’t yet planted the cherry tree. It is a full-size one, and if I am to find a place for it, I will have to limit its growth. I have been thinking about whether to plant it with a root barrier, or not use it and instead, plant a dwarf. I also want to get at least one more blueberry to replace the one which was cruelly eaten by vine weevil. I want to clean the concrete off the blackberry frame and stain it before I plant the blackberries. Apart from that, there is not much more to do.

It is spring and the sun is out and the frogs are up, and it is time to bring this ship into the shore. The last remaining stage is to plant up the right hand side of the garden.

Right hand side of the garden ready for planting

I have a few large plants to install first, and then I will go and buy some smaller ones for ground cover and for the smaller gaps.

I planted the holly J C Van der Tol just in front of the compost bins, at the right hand side. When I took the holly out of its pot, I found it had hardly any roots. There was no evidence of vine weevil, and it has been consistently treated for vine weevil anyway. The leaves look glossy and healthy apart from a bit of yellow, but there are not many leaves and growth has not been strong. I hope it will do better in the ground.

I also planted the cornus Alba Sibirica, which is the right hand one of the group. Two done, and five to go!

Last week I suddenly decided it was time I erected the blackberry frame. The forecast was for a dryish Thursday and Friday, so on Thursday I dug the holes, and on Friday I went to B&Q to get the posts and cross-pieces. However, the rain was already taking no notice of the forecast on Friday, and there was no hope of it letting up over the weekend, so I put the wood in the garage and waited.

And then, this week, we had a dry spell. I had planned to dig the holes a little deeper, but was impeded by the fact that they contained about 8 inches of water. It was a messy job, but I managed to get them 2 feet deep. My boss had said a good depth for the holes was a third of the length of the post, but I wasn’t falling for that sort of thing again (see the entry for the octagonal pond construction). I went out and bought some Postcrete. I had been been unsure about whether to use Postcrete, because the bag said it set in only 5-10 minutes and I thought I might not have time to get the post positioned right before it was too late, but I had a chat with a man putting up next door’s fence some weeks ago, and he said that actually you did get time to move the posts if necessary. And he did make it look very easy.

The instructions said I needed one 20kg bag per hole, but Postcrete’s idea of a hole was: 20 cm square, containing a 10 cm square fence post and 75 cm deep. My idea of a hole was: 18 cm square, containing an 8 cm square fence post and 60 cm deep. By my calculations, a bag of Postcrete should do 22500 cubic centimetres. As one of my holes was only 15600 cubic centimetres, I thought that two bags should do three of my holes.

Just because a professional makes something look easy, it doesn’t mean it is, but putting posts in really is easy, and I put them in yesterday. You measure carefully where you want the post, and then let it lean against one side of the hole or another while you pour in the Postcrete, and then when there’s enough in there, you use a spirit level against two sides of the post to get it level, and keep checking it is level for a few minutes until it stops moving about when you let go. It is probably slightly easier if you have someone else to hold the post, but it’s not necessary. The one thing I did wrong was to forget to check the height of the second post compared to the first one. That was a silly mistake. Also, the Postcrete did not obey simple GCSE maths and it turned out that two-thirds of a bag really did only do two-thirds of a hole.

Posts for blackberry frame

Just to be clear on one thing: my posts are not parallel to the fence posts because the fence posts are wonky. My posts are properly levelled. Anyone who doesn’t believe me is welcome to come round with their spirit level.

In the afternoon I was going to screw the cross-pieces onto the posts. A YouTube video said that it was all right to do that after four hours, but the posts didn’t feel very secure, so I decided to fill up the rest of the space in the holes with some mortar instead. I had nearly a whole bag of cement left over from laying the paving, and some sand, so I mixed my own and interspersed it with stones until the light failed.

This morning I finished off adding the mortar, bringing it up to just above ground level and sloping the surface away from the posts so that the posts will not have damp soil or puddles against them at ground level. The posts look better if you put soil around them, but I don’t want to be replacing the posts in five years’ time.

In the afternoon I attached the cross-pieces. I was very glad I had waited 24 hours after erecting the posts because they felt a lot sturdier this time. If you are wondering why I didn’t just wait a week or two to make absolutely sure, the reason is that I did that when my dad erected a raspberry frame in the summer of 1996. The posts all warped in the meantime, making it very difficult to fit any cross-pieces to it and making the whole edifice look very wonky. This time the posts didn’t get a chance to warp, and this is the result.

Blackberry frame finished

I may later saw a few centimetres off the left hand post to make it level with the others. It depends on whether I think anyone will care. Apart from that, the only thing left is to attach some eyes and wires to the frame so I can tie some blackberries to them. And do quite a lot of tidying up.

Just over two weeks on from sowing the grass seed and covering it up with a tarpaulin, here are the results.

The grass under the tarpaulin revealed

As you can see, the experiment appears to have been a huge success. All but the grass at the very bottom right hand corner of the picture was covered by the tarpaulin until just before I took the picture. The grass seems to be doing even better than the grass I sowed in the front garden, a week earlier, and this may be because the tarpaulin provides some insulation. There is a white streak, which may be because of some leaves getting stuck in a fold in the tarpaulin and blocking the light. The grass shown is in the shadiest part of the lawn. Up at the other end, which gets more sun, the tarpaulin is becoming puffed up in places as the grass pushes it upwards.

There are still more leaves yet to fall, so I am inclined to leave the tarpaulin on for the time being. I will review it next week.

Last week I banged a series of wooden pegs into the back lawn to determine how much the slope was. I discovered that the difference in height between the lowest corner and the highest corner was 9 cm. I decided that if I tried to make the middle of the lawn level it would just accentuate the slope of the edging, and that the best thing was to have a gradual slope that followed the slope of the edging. So that’s what I did. I borrowed a bit of top soil from the right-hand area of the garden, and ordered 10 bags of top soil and 10 bags of compost from The Compost Centre so I could pay it back when the supplies arrived.

I bought some general purpose lawn seed and mixed it with the rest of my shade mix seed. I estimated the lawn area to be 25.2 square metres, and the seed is supposed to be sown at 35g per metre for new lawns. The packet misleadingly says “Covers up to 20 square metres” but this only applies if you are sowing the seed onto an existing lawn. I didn’t realise this until I got home and found there wasn’t quite enough seed. But I decided it didn’t matter, and sowed it anyway.

The back lawn sown with grass seed, before raking it in

I also thought about how I was going to keep (a) leaves (b) beech nuts (c) cats and (d) pigeons off the lawn while it was germinating. I thought about using netting, but then suddenly I came up with what may turn out to be my harest-brained idea of the whole Garden Renovation Project. Having observed the vigorous growth of weeds underneath the tarpaulin over the last few years, I decided to put the tarpaulin over the seed. There should be enough light. There should also be enough water because I have watered the seed well and generally the soil stays damp under the tarpaulin for a while. I have punctured the tarpaulin in several places so the rainwater can get in anyway.

And if this idea doesn’t work, then all I have to do is spend another £6 on seed in the spring.

Today I seeded the area of the front lawn where the cherry tree roots used to be.

The front lawn, seeded and netted

Before I started, I had to remove three presents from foxes, and I didn’t want any more, so I netted the area. This should also keep any autumn leaves away. It was difficult to arrange the netting because it was an irregular shape. I used three pieces of netting in the end. I also planted some snowdrops and early irises at the edge of the cotoneaster hedge, and some plug pansies on top of the bulbs. It will be nice to have some cheerful colour in winter.

The weather continues to be exceptionally dry. This is great for gardening projects, but rotten for my anti-vine weevil nematodes, which like being a bit damp. I have had to water my garden every few days to keep the soil moist.

I carried on digging up the cherry tree roots, and finally got them all out, or all the big ones near the surface, anyway.

Cherry roots dug up

I had hoped that there might be a surplus of soil because the level of the lawn was too high around the cherry tree. No such luck. Indeed, I probably need to import some more soil from the last undeveloped part of the garden. On the plus side, I managed to squish at least 20 cockchafer larvae and two leatherjackets while digging the area over.

I am still thinking about what to do about the back garden lawn. One option is to have the lawn level in the middle, but have it sloping up or down near the edges to match the level of the edging. A level lawn is an advantage if you want to put chairs out and sit on it, but I haven’t done this for years. Alternatively I could make the lawn slope from side to side and front to back uniformly across the area. I think that the option I choose will depend on how extreme the difference is, and I haven’t yet determined this.

With one more day of my week off work to go, I am feeling deeply tired from all this labour. I really hope it rains tomorrow. All day. Interestingly, the Met Office has a maximum probability of precipitation of 50% at 0700, but a yellow warning for rain. Maybe the warning is that, with 50% or less chance of rain, we will all be very surprised if the rain happens and will forget our coats and umbrellas.

The weather and my back have continued to be model citizens, and I finished the digging on Monday. Yesterday and today I carried out the macro-levelling of the area, shifting piles of soil from the far end to the near end, and I think there is approximately the right amount of soil, which is great.

So I started banging in some pegs to help me complete the micro-levelling. This was where I hit a problem. The block edging is not perfectly level. Further, the level does not change uniformly. I knew this already, but up to now I was pretending that I didn’t. So if I want the edges of my lawn to be at the same level as the blocks (which I do) then I need to put a slope on my lawn. This requires a bit of thought.

So I thought a bit, and then I decided to switch my attention to a task requiring lots of brute force and not much thinking: removing the cherry tree roots from my lawn.

Cherry root in front lawn

I have so far removed two chunks of root, and there was quite a lot of sawing involved. However, it was easier than removing the Leylandii roots because I didn’t have to worry about the tree falling down while I was sawing through the roots. I may not get to the stage of seeding my back lawn this autumn, but I should be able to finish removing the root in time to reseed the bare patch of the front lawn.

We have had a lot of dry weather, and the soil is as dry as dust in the front. I need it to rain because I have bought some nematodes to kill off my vine weevil community, and they need to have damp soil in order to do their job.