Helen's Garden Renovation Project

Today I finally finished murdering the bay tree, and what a job that was. It was often raining while I was tackling the roots with my loppers and saw, but there was shelter from the huge beech tree overhead, and it was hot work, so I think any drops that landed on me evaporated pretty quickly.

The bay tree, uprooted

I still have quite a bit of work to do, sawing up the stems into manageable pieces, getting the rootball out of the hole, and filling up the hole. I have managed to fill up the hole where the temporary pond was, so now I just have to fill up the hole left by the bay tree. This month I was hoping to take the path up as well, but that may still be possible if it doesn’t rain all the time. It will be easiest if I can fill the hole first and cover the area with plastic so that the fragments of rubble from the path are easy to sweep up.

This morning it was raining and it was far too soggy to carry on digging up the bay tree, so I went to Redfields Garden Centre just on the offchance that they might have a male golden variegated holly. And they did! So I bought one and planted him.

Ilex aquifolium ‘Myrtifolium Aurea Maculata’

I used some Rootgrow, which needs using up because it only keeps for about a year. The label says that the holly reaches a height of 75cm after 10 years, but given that it’s almost that height now, and it only cost £10.99, I think I’ll take that information with a pinch of salt. It’s possible that it may not be happy in the location I have given it, because it won’t get a lot of sun, but if it can manage to grow a bit taller it will get more.

I know I was supposed to be digging up the bay tree and filling in the temporary pond this month, and not getting distracted by pretty prickly plants, but it will be much easier to continue with this work if it stops raining for a bit. Maybe next week.