Helen's Garden Renovation Project

It was another dry and mild weekend, so I moved the blueberries. When I first planted them, I didn’t read the instructions which say that they should be planted 1.5 m apart. I also planted them too near the edge of the lawn and the edge of the greenhouse base, making it hard to net them. So they needed to be moved, and now was the perfect time.

Unfortunately I soon realised that there was no way I was going to be able to plant them 1.5 m apart. There just isn’t room. So I had to compromise. Some of the bushes are only just over a metre apart. But they do have over twice as much room as they did before I moved them.

Blueberries in their new positions

The plants are still quite small, so they were easy to move. I carried each one over on a spade. As long as I remember to water them next year, they should be fine.

This morning it was again not too cold and not raining either, so I finished the octagonal edge. That is, finished it horizontally.

Octagonal pond edge in place

It was a really difficult job getting the edges to line up. I thought my form was accurate enough but it wasn’t. In the end I decided that the important thing was to get the front and back edges parallel with the patio edge, and the left and right edges perpendicular to the patio edge, and let the slanting edges fend for themselves. It looks fine when viewed from the patio, but if I look at it when standing on the lawn, I can see that the edges are not quite true. So I need to make sure I grow something sufficiently tall in between the lawn and the pond. Fortunately I am now quite used to the idea that the main objective of plant design is not to showcase the plants to their best advantage, or to juxtapose different textures, colours and heights so as to form an integrated and balanced scene, but to hide the deficiencies in the hard landscaping.

I now need to level off the edges by adding extra mortar, dig the pond itself, including a sloping edge for animals to get out, and a marginal shelf, and buy some pond liner, if anyone is selling any at this time of year. Unfortunately some very cold weather is forecast for Friday, so both digging and mortaring may be impossible. So it’s a good thing I took advantage of the mild and dry weekend.