Helen's Garden Renovation Project

The promised rain didn’t really come to much, so I had a good week of gardening. It’s now the time of year when I need to spend a lot of time on maintenance, so progress has not been as fast as it is in early spring, but I have started work on dismantling the path. I have removed all the paving apart from one little triangle that is stuck fast to the foundation and refuses to come loose. (You can’t see the triangle in the picture because it is in the part of the path that has turned a corner).

And then I made a start on taking up the foundation. The mortar mix used to make the foundation has varied a lot among my different sections of path, and unfortunately, these foundations are very hard. The work is also made more difficult by the fact that the path is right against my neighbour’s fence, which means I have to be careful how I swing the pickaxe and also take care next to the fence posts. I have managed to remove only about an eighth of the foundation so far (the path turns a corner at the end, so there is more to do than is apparent from the picture). I tried drilling holes in the foundation using my power drill with hammer action, but that was very unsuccessful – after I had drilled a row of holes, the slab eventually cracked along a different line further up.

Then I wondered whether some acid might help to weaken the concrete – after all, it contains calcium compounds, which should like reacting with acid. I thought about pouring some vinegar on it, but then I decided toilet cleaner would be even better. The toilet cleaner is easily the most corrosive thing in my house – the limescale remover for the taps only has an X on it, but the toilet cleaner has a picture of drops burning a hole in someone’s hand. And it contains hydrochloric acid, and is thick and clingy so should stay on the concrete until it rains. So I made three lines of toilet cleaner. There was not much sign of a reaction – a mass of very small bubbles, but no audible fizzing. Perhaps it would be better to chisel out a groove and pour the toilet cleaner into that, then see if a crack develops if I bash it again after a day or so.

Still, I have done an eighth of the path, and I should be able to get through it eventually – it will just take time, like the Leylandii.

This is my latest arrangement of the tarpaulin on the pond. I am hoping that it will prove to be completely waterproof, but I need to wait for some rain to find out. The pond builder has been round to look at the pond, but has not told me his verdict yet. Blagdon has not replied to my email. It said it might take 14 days to respond unless my email referred to critically ill fish, but even if I get a reply today, this is still appallingly slow customer service. I can’t find any reviews of Blagdon Pond Paint on the Internet, which is unusual. It would be reassuring to hear that someone has managed to successfully waterproof a pond without the paint coming off and making a black sludge.

I have been distracting myself from the Pond Disaster by thinking about my planting plan for the left hand side of the garden. There is just about room for the apple trees at the centre back of the garden as long as I allow the canopies of the trees to overlap with the lawn. I am planning to move the trees in November, although my dad says I can move them any time I like as long as I water them well. An important advantage of moving them in November is that they will be lighter, especially as I can prune them after I have eaten the apples. I think there will be room for the magnolia at the far left hand corner. I am quite excited at the thought of this, as I had thought that the magnolia would have to stay in its pot for ever. I also hope to put in the buddleia and escallonia next to the fence, and the pieris in the damp patch behind the pond (it will be damp because that’s where the overflow empties) and irises near the shallow pond. My three cornuses are supposed to go where the magnolia is going, but I can put them in the right hand side of the garden, next to the third pond. I don’t see why not.

Today, with no rain likely until Saturday or even Sunday, I thought it was time to paint the pond. There were strong winds on Monday and I was getting fed up with the tarpaulin blowing around. It would be good to get the pond up and running. So I took off the tarpaulin and cleaned out the interior, but when I wiped it with a damp cloth, the cloth still came away black. I am not convinced that the new paint will adhere if the old is still coming away. Also I found that the concrete skin on the bottom of the pond has cracked all over, and in some places it’s quite bad. So I rang up my pond builder, who will take a look in the next few days, and I emailed Blagdon, the manufacturers of the pond paint, and I will see what people say.

I am really disappointed about the pond. I don’t mind waiting for it to dry out, because this is not a fast-moving project, but I am losing faith that it will ever be operational. Perhaps I will have to drill holes in the bottom and make it into a raised bed. Or perhaps I could put a large plastic bin in it and let that fill with clean water while the rest of the pond fills up with black sludge. Or, finally, I could sand off all the black paint and put a chemical in the pond that will react with the poisonous chemicals that leach out of concrete, thus making them harmless.

On the bright side, there was still no reason why I couldn’t get on with the rest of the project. I planted a skimmia, which would have meant the loss of one pot, except that I had to displace two pulmonaria to make room for the skimmia. I moved one pulmonaria further over to the gate, and put the other in a pot to give to my mum, who has pink pulmonaria and light blue pulmonaria, but does not have this variety, which has deep blue flowers. She seems perfectly happy with what she has, but I think she could do with one of these.

I have planted the skimmia in the side border of the front garden. It is in quite a dark place but skimmia are supposed to be happy with shade. The skimmia is a female. We have several males just over the road, so there should be plenty of berries.

I also planted the pyracantha. I have put it against the last fence panel of the right-hand boundary because the foxes made a hole in the fence panel. I have now got a new fence panel but I don’t want the foxes to make a hole in that one too. The fence panel has netting over it, which I will have to gradually roll up as the pyracantha grows.

I made a start on digging over the cut-out rectangle at the left of the patio. The area is currently occupied by lychnis and with the soil like dust it was hard pulling it out. This is what I started with:

Number of pots = 136. Percentage reduction so far = 6.2%.

This morning I watered all my potted plants because it has been so dry and even quite hot. I scooped the water out of the shallow pond to use for watering, and that was when I noticed that the newts had moved in. Now it says quite explicitly in the Plan that the newts are to use the deep, raised pond and the shallow pond is for the frogs. To be fair, I haven’t put up the warning notices or the CCTV cameras yet, but something tells me that I am not going to be able to enforce my amphibian apartheid, and the newts are going to eat all the frogspawn every spring as usual.

On the subject of gardening fails, my beautiful little hellbores that I planted from seeds from Chiltern Seeds have disappeared. There was a bit of slime in the pot, so I think that slugs or snails got them. I still have plenty of seeds left in the packet, but of course they may not germinate until next spring, which is a long time to wait. The instructions say that I should keep them at 0C for 6 weeks, so I put them in the fridge last time, but perhaps this time I will try the deep freeze in the hope that they will be tricked into germinating in the middle of summer. And I will protect them from the slugs and snails until they are big and strong.

However, the magnolia is not a fail. Oh no. And I really do not know which picture is the best so here are three of them.