Helen's Garden Renovation Project

It looks as if today is the last dry day we are going to get for some time, so I got rid of six more pots and planted a viola, two primulas and three campanula portenschliagiana under the camellia. I chiselled out some excess mortar so I could plant them close to the edging.

Planting was hard work because the camellia has a lot of roots. I don’t think I will attempt to plant anything closer to the centre of the camellia because it needs its roots. There is still some more space next to the fence, though. I may later need to move some of the plants to put in a path to the compost bins, but that will not be a problem. The main thing is to get the plants out of the pots and into the ground where they will need much less maintenance.

Taking up the path will be a good thing to do in the coming weeks because it can be done in light rain (in fact, is best done in light rain because it is such hard work) and it doesn’t matter if the ground is soggy. It’s a good thing, really, that I haven’t got the lower pond operational yet because some fragments of concrete and mortar are bound to land in it, and might poison the water. After taking up the path, I am not sure what I will do next. I really need to move the apple trees, but that cannot be done until November – six months away. If I can work out where I want to put things, I may be able to plant in between the trees.

Number of pots = 129. Percentage reduction so far = 11%

Today I finished the hedge. Good.

It didn’t take me long to slot in the final tree because I got better at planting large things with practice. Also today I dished out the vine weevil killer. I used to dose every plant, but that takes such a long time and is so expensive, so this time I planned to dose only the most valuable plants (i.e. the biggest ones, and ones that I only have one of) and the most vulnerable (i.e. the euonymus and the primulas). I then did as many plants as possible with what I had left over. I used two 750ml bottles instead of five, so that’s an improvement.

Also today I did a lot of tidying up. It’s easy to clear away the lime tree flowers and dead leaves while everything is as dry as dust, but when the rain comes, as one day it surely will, they will turn to sludge and it will be much less pleasant to dispose of them.

I think the next thing I need to do is to take up the rest of the path on the left hand side. It will be easier to do this before I plant things in that area, and also I will be able to see more clearly what space is available and therefore work out what to do with it.

Number of pots = 135. Percentage reduction so far = 6.9%

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%.

Today I decided to plant my two baby thuja and the great big euonymus, thus completing the hedge apart from the gap I left last time, which I will fill later. This is what the fence looked like before I started digging:

Then I planted my two baby thuja, which was a walk in the park after planting the big ones. And then I planted my biggest euonymus. Getting it out of the pot was hard, mainly because the pot was even heavier than the plant. I had some reservations about planting the euonymus. I am concerned that there may not, really, be room for it there. And also, it didn’t look 100% healthy. It has white blotches on the leaves and I think it has had whitefly. But I think that it probably just doesn’t like being in a pot. So I gave it lots of fertiliser, and lots of water, and maybe next month I will spray it with something and see if it cheers up.

The new thuja are so small compared with the others. I hope they manage to hold their own. At least they will get enough light. I will have to make sure that I give them, and the euonymus, plenty of water.

Talking of water, the Met Office has changed its prediction for May. It’s now giving the dry weather to the north, and allocating the rain to the south. While I admit we need the rain, I was getting used to this new concept of being able to do some gardening whenever I felt like it. So I think the pond will probably stay unpainted, and I will go back to Plan A: plant as many things as possible.

I now have 137 pots. This is a reduction of 5.5%. Progress is happening.

Today I decided to go for it and plant the six thuja in the trench despite the fact that hot weather was forecast. As I learned last autumn, planting trees of that size is no joke. As last autumn, I got better at it as I went along, but it was still a very long job. In the process I lost my trowel. I think I may have buried it while planting. I am afraid it will just have to stay there because there is no way I am digging the plants up again to look for it. It was part of my comprehensive 21st birthday toolkit present from my parents, and has had a long and productive life. May it rust in peace.

The observant reader will notice that there is a gap in the hedge in the following picture. This is because I didn’t dig the trench quite wide enough. Rather than doing some more digging, I decided that I would plant five of the thuja and put the sixth one in later, as I was getting quite tired and I wanted to make sure I finished the job. In fact, I didn’t quite manage to fill the gaps with soil up to the required level, but this was not such a bad thing because I could then fill up the hollows with water and thus give the trees a really good soaking.

Leylandii leaves are well known for causing a rash on contact with exposed skin. I had been wondering whether thuja leaves are just as bad. After today’s session, I think I can say, “Not quite.” I have red mottling all up both arms, but it doesn’t itch or feel sore.

I now have 140 pots – a reduction of 3.4%. And there is a lot more space on my patio now.

It’s been such a lot of work, but just when I was thinking I would never finish removing the Leylandii roots, I suddenly did.

I am now ready to plant the six thuja in the trench. This is not something I expect to complete in one session, but you never know. I could give it a go tomorrow.

The warm, dry, sunny weather continues. I really cannot remember when it last rained. This is good in that I can take every opportunity I have to work in the garden, but bad in that I have to do such a lot of watering. I have counted my pots, not including the bulbs in the side passage which I am leaving to their own devices. I have 145 pots. My aim is to reduce this by 50% by the end of June.

The weather forecast is for more dry weather well into mid-May. This has caused me to think again about my pond plans. If May is hot and dry, then the advantage of planting in May rather than, say, June or July, is reduced. Perhaps I will paint the pond in May instead of July, even though this will mean less planting progress (because I will have less time to do the planting). After all, we may have a very rainy summer to follow this exceptionally dry spring. And it would be nice to get the tarpaulin off the pond and have some water and plants in it instead.

Today is the first anniversary of Dave’s death, and I came home from work an hour early and planted a rhododendron. It is the one that my neighbours Nick and Mel kindly gave me when they learned that he had died.

I had already prepared the site by digging a hole of the right size, and so it didn’t take me long to plant it.

And now it can get on with flowering. I think I need a stone frog ornament to put next to it, although I realise that not everyone would agree.

For love is eternal. And those we love shall be with us throughout all eternity.

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.

It’s definitely time to start planting. The major job is to get the six big thuja into the ground instead of the Leylandii. I have now removed all but one of the Leylandii, and have partly dug up the remaining one. I took the following picture last week, when I made a lot of progress because I took the week off work and it didn’t rain.

The price for the lack of rain is that I have to water all my plants. I have been scooping out the water out of the shallow pond, which will all have to come out because I haven’t sealed the mortar yet, and the chemicals in the water might hurt the frogs. They probably won’t hurt the plants, though.

I was going to paint the pond last week, but I was still unsure about whether it was dry enough yet, as some more water got in and it had black pigment in it. I decided that digging up the Leylandii was more urgent, and it won’t do the pond any harm if it is left until June before it gets painted. So the tarpaulin stays on. You can see it in the foreground of the picture above. I have cut a triangular piece of tarpaulin and hemmed it to stop it fraying, so it is easy to put over the pond and keep in place.

Although the thuja planting is the biggest and most important job, planting some of the smaller plants is also worth doing because it reduces the amount of watering and feeding I have to do. I have removed all the rubble from the area near the camellia and have started on the underplanting. I am going to have some of: viola, primula, aquilegia, geranium sangineum, hellebore and probably honesty, if I recognise the emerging seedlings correctly.

And finally, here is a preview of the magnolia. We may have some overnight frosts in the next few days, but if we don’t… oh wow!

Spring is here. The camellia certainly thinks so.

This means that the grass is going to start growing any minute, and weeds will appear in the patches of bare earth. And I am now having the busiest March for tutoring since 2008 – I am turning people down because I have no space until after the summer exams start. The most important job is still to remove the Leylandii, but I also need to make sure the rest of the garden is as little bother as possible while I carry on with Renovation. So I have cut a straight line across the new lawn, and covered the bare earth section with bits of pond liner and compost bags and a tarpaulin. That should stop any weeds until I have time to dig it over and sow some seed. This won’t be until the autumn at the earliest. Apart from mining the area for additional earth, I can leave it to its own devices until then. Fortunately I correctly chose this week to take off work. The forecast is for dry weather all week, so I hope to get a lot done.

I am carrying out my plan to shorten the middle tree and use it as a support to remove the other two trees. I have removed one of the trees using the same method as I did a few weeks ago, and this week I hope to remove the other two. Then I will still have some roots to dig out of the ground, but when that is done, it will be time to plant the thuja.

The magnolia which I dug up and stuck in a pot is still alive and is just beginning to open its flower buds. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but it is looking like there will be an amazing show this year. I hope the frosts hold off.