Helen's Garden Renovation Project

I think the Met Office has been doing what my colleague at work, Susie, refers to as “managing expectations”. Yesterday morning it was predicting sunshine and heavy showers, with the emphasis on the heavy showers, but actually we got just the sunshine. This morning was a bit soggy, but I couldn’t afford to miss a session, so I went out and got cold and wet, but I did make progress.

Overview of garden with two sides of new lawn marked out

I have finished breaking up the path foundations, and have started putting out the poles and string to mark out where the lawn should go, according to my plan on squared paper. The lawn is to run diagonally across the garden to try and make it look longer. It doesn’t look as if I need to dig up the apple tree yet after all, but I may still yet move the lawn boundaries. It also looks as if the yellow euonymus can stay where it is for the time being. This is all good news because I am running out of time. As you can see very clearly, the recent winds have been very unkind to next door’s fence, and I was worried that the fence might fall on the apple tree and squash it. I stuck a brown piece of wood from the raspberry frame in the ground between the apple tree and the fence in the hope that it would take the brunt of any collision, but now that one panel has almost parted company with the post, the wind can get through the gap and I am hoping there will be no further damage.

Marking out large areas with poles and string is no joke, partly because my string is quite feeble – thin and stretchy – and my poles are about 15 years old and sometimes break into several pieces when I try to stuff them in the ground. On the picture I have drawn a line in pale grey to show where the string is because you wouldn’t be able to see the original string very well at the resolution I am using. I have been using a large metal right-angled triangle with 45 degree angles to position the string but even so I don’t think I have been very accurate. However, I have probably been accurate enough to work out what I want to do. I haven’t marked off the far long edge of the lawn because there were too many things in the way, like compost bags and sections of path foundations. I now know that I can move a lot of stuff to the area to the right of and in front of the big conifer in the corner because no building work will need to be carried out there. The “stuff” consists of sections of path foundation, and the plants in containers. I need to get as many plants off the patio as possible because there will be some cutting work carried out there. So I will level out the ground near the conifer, put the path foundations on the ground, and then put the plants on the path foundations. It looks as if I should be able to have the lawn completely flat, which I think will look better than a sloping lawn, and then have some rocks and nice rooty plants to support a rise in ground height right at the end of the garden.

And now I can spend the rest of the day being warm and dry, and do some armchair gardening, which involves thinking about which plants I would like to have at the left-hand side of the garden.

We have had very heavy rain recently, and this has slightly held up progress. The garden is very muddy, despite my well-drained sandy soil. I have missed a few sessions because the rain was too torrential. However, this morning a little light rain was quite welcome for cooling purposes as I wielded the pickaxe yet again.

The path foundations, mostly broken up into small pieces

Progress was quite slow at first, but now I have worked out a good technique. The thing to do is to gently bash a groove across the path where I want it to break. When this has been established, give it a few good whacks in various places along the groove until a crack appears. At this point, even if the crack is very narrow, it is possible to lever up the lump of concrete and it will snap off at the groove. Even so, I can’t do too much in one session because I get tired and then there is the risk of injury either to myself or to bits of the garden that I don’t want bashed up. The concrete is heavy too. I can just about carry the sections shown in my photograph, but I find it’s better to roll them end over end across the long-suffering lawn so that my back lasts as long as possible. This is very calorie-intensive work, so it is important to keep replenishing the fuel supplies by eating lots of cake.

I am aware that time is moving on fast. If I really am going to get these works carried out in January, I need to do even more. In time-honoured fashion, here is another one of my lists of things I probably won’t manage to do.

(1) Finish removing foundations of path to the right of where the raspberry frame was.
(2) Map out with poles and string where the pond and lawn will go.
(3) Look at poles and string and dither a bit while trying to decide whether this is what I really want. Move poles and string about and probably go back to original configuration.
(4) Dig up euonymus (the yellow stuff to the right of the black plastic in the overview picture below) and apple tree (at the left of the overview picture, still with leaves on) if they are in the way.
(5) Remove any other paths that are in the way.
(6) Decide which materials to use to build pond (see Kebur at http://www.kebur.co.uk/).
(7) Get quotes from work.

Garden overview

We have been very lucky with the weather so far, and I have now finished demolishing the raspberry frame. I sawed the posts into three sections and took them over to the right hand side of the garden. I also moved the footings to join the rest of the rubble next to the temporary pond. I have started taking up the foundations of the path to the right of the raspberry frame but this is quite hard work. I will have to break it into sections by creating a score line with my pickaxe and then levering it up so that it breaks along the score line. The foundations are quite hard so this will not be a fast process.

The raspberry frame is no more

I am now working on a more accurate version of the plan for the diagonal lawn and pond. I want to lawn to run at exactly 45 degrees to the house, so I have worked out some exact coordinates and plotted them on a spreadsheet, which allows me to create a new scale drawing. The next thing I need to do is to mark out where the lawn will go with poles and string, and spend a long time looking at it to see if I like it. I also need to do this to find out whether I have to remove any more plants or hard landscaping. I may need to dig up the euonymus at the end of the garden, and even one of the apple trees (the furthest one from the house).

The forecast for the next few days is rain, severe gales, and more rain. So the garden will just have to wait until we get some drier weather.

I am sad to report that in this year’s sample of eight very badly taken pelargonium cuttings, two didn’t make it, and this may turn into three failures. Fortunately we have still not had a frost, so I took some more cuttings, still very badly.

There are now less than two months to go before I must get quotations for the pond building and lawn edge laying. Unlike last year, I have been very busy with tuition, and haven’t had much time for the garden. I am still in the process of demolishing the raspberry frame. This job is going well.

The demolition of the raspberry frame. Only two posts out of six are still standing.

I have dug up four of the posts, and they were all very easy to remove. I have sawn the posts into approximately two-foot (60 cm) lengths so that I can dispose of the wood later. I tried to bash the concrete footings with a pickaxe, but haven’t made much headway. I was hoping that the concrete wouldn’t be very good and would break up easily, but no such luck. I have to hand it to my dad – he is an expert concrete maker. I think the fact that he made my mum wash all the rubble before we put it in the holes helped the bonding too. Fortunately the concrete-clad sawn-off posts are not too heavy to lift. I will use the sack trolley to transport them to the other side of the garden, out of the way, and perhaps they can be used for rubble when building the pond.

I have been encountering a new threat to the garden development project – foxes. They are moving my ground covering sheets and digging holes. However, there is a distinct reduction in cat mess, so maybe they are keeping the cats away. The foxes could be a big problem because of their ability to dig fairly large holes. I don’t want my new shrubs dug up and I don’t want craters in my lawn. On the other hand, if I could somehow persuade them to dig in certain areas only, they could help create the new pond.