Helen's Garden Renovation Project

We had lots and lots of rain but now it’s time for a dry spell, so I finished off planting the hedge.

The second row of four thuja plicata, all planted

I am now much better at planting big trees than I was last week. It was still hard work, but much less effort than last time. Yesterday I planted one tree in the morning, and the other two in the afternoon. I gave them a bag of compost each, and borrowed some soil from elsewhere to fill the hole. It is now apparent that I am going to need a lot of soil to get the level back up in this area. I need to take it from some area of the garden that isn’t relevant to the next phase of the work.

The Hedge Part 1 has grown well.

The first four thuja that I planted two years ago

As you can see, both hedges are just beginning to reach beyond the top of the fence. I found it strange that the trees kept in pots should grow just as fast as the trees planted in open ground. However, the trees in the pots are not yet pot-bound, so perhaps the restriction of the roots hasn’t had any effect yet. Also, the trees in pots probably got more light than the ones behind the greenhouse, which are hemmed in by the fences and the bay tree. And the trees in pots may have got more water, although I was careful to water the hedge whenever it was hot and dry for a few days at a time. I fed the trees in pots more than the hedge too.

These thoughts about the growth rate are not just of academic interest; I have to decide what to do about the middle section of the hedge. Although I would like to let the replacement trees grow a little bigger before I remove the middle four Leylandii, I am afraid I will not be able to plant them if they are 7 ft tall. I am thinking that the best thing to do would be to remove the Leylandii in March and then plant the six replacement thuja as soon as the ground is warm enough, before they have had a chance to grow any more.

I also now have to face my miscalculation about the number of thuja needed. You can see from the picture below that there is a big gap between the left-hand edge of the hedge and the blue conifer.

 The heavy rain and winds have not been good for my sedums. Poor things.

My sedums after being rained on a lot

Yesterday it rained.  A lot. Tomorrow it is forecast to rain again. A lot. So today I mowed the lawn and tried to plant the new hedge. I had to do a bit more digging first, but then I was ready to put the first tree in place. Then it started raining. I almost gave up, but then it stopped raining and the sky turned an innocent blue, so I went back to tree planting.

I found out that planting a tree of that size is non-trivial. It is so heavy, for a start! Then it has to be at the right distance from the other trees, the right distance from the fence, and the right level, vertically speaking. I tried to plant it in the orientation that would make the trunk look straightest. And it was jolly hard work. My legs were turning to jelly by the time I had finished. I stuck some bamboo canes around the tree to give it some gentle support, put my muddy spirit level away, and went indoors and wiped the mud off my tape measure. I was interested to see that the newly planted tree looks about as big as the four that I planted two years ago. I had thought that the trees in pots would grow more slowly than those in the ground, but I hadn’t measured the heights to check this. Maybe the extra food that the potted trees got made up for not having so much room to spread their roots about. This implies that it could be worth feeding the planted trees, in the summer at least.

The fifth thuja has just been planted.

And I still have nine more of these to plant! I need six thuja to go in place of the four remaining Leylandii, so I will plant three more this time. Then I will see how it looks and maybe plant more, and buy some more thuja to finish off the hedge next year. I really should have remembered that I was planting the thuja two feet apart when I bought them. If I were doing this project again, I would not grow the trees so big before planting them. I would perhaps buy small ones and grow them on for a year or two, but I wouldn’t let them get to five feet high before planting them.

At least I can have a nice rest tomorrow while the rain waters my tree for me.

The weather is noticeably cooler and the days are equally noticeably shorter. I fed my plants a few days ago. I may make that the last feed of the season, or they may get another one at the end of September. I have been starting to tidy up now that growth has slowed down. If I am lucky my garden will look tidy for about a month, and then the leaves and the beech nuts will start to come down in force.

I have removed the second tree completely, and a nice tree surgeon came round to trim the hedges. I trimmed back some of the jungle at the left hand edge of the garden as well.

Preparation for the second instalment of the new hedge

You may notice that the number of the plants on the blue tarpaulin has decreased significantly. This is not because they have all died, but because I have started to move them out of the way of the planned works.

Space made for winter storage of plants

The plants are now sitting between the bay tree and the greenhouse. I have started to dig up some turf, which I shall bury somewhere that won’t be dug up imminently so it can rot down. I have put some of the path foundation blocks on the bare earth and I will use this space to store more plants. The essential thing is to get them out of the way when the landscapers are busy building the pond and cutting up the patio. And it’s looking as if I may just about be able to do it, given that the plants need less growth space in winter.

The next job will be to plant the thuja in the gap between the four remaining Leylandii and the blue conifer. I will dig in plenty of compost. The first set of four thuja that I planted two years ago are now almost level with the top of the fence.

Now that it is September we have been having hot, dry weather. I have made good progress on removing the two Leylandii. I have dug up the leftmost tree, so there are only five still standing.

One Leyandii completely gone and one reduced to half height

My friend Graham kindly came round and sawed through the trunk of the other tree to be removed (this is now the leftmost tree in the picture) while I held onto the top half. Then we carefully let go and it fell onto the tarpaulin, as you can see in the picture.

I have also done nearly all the shredding, and started to dig up the second tree. The first tree took about 3-4 hours to dig up, and I expect this one will take the same time.

I have eaten all my Discovery apples now. I am amused to see that Charles Ross has managed to do an apple, even though he never had any blossom. Obviously a virgin birth. It won’t be ready to eat for at least another month.

We have sunshine and showers forecast for the Bank Holiday weekend. Since it was doing sunshine this morning I decided it was time to start cutting bits off the two Leylandii trees that I am going to remove this autumn. They are at the left of the existing hedge. The job needs doing now because the other Leylandii need a trim, and it seems pointless to trim the two trees that I am going to remove. I intelligently ate a substantial piece of cake first to make sure I had enough fuel to complete the job.

The two left hand Leylandii will soon be removed

You can’t see all the branches that I removed in this picture, but I stacked them on the tarpaulin and there were a lot of them. I have made a start on shredding them, but this will be a two-hour job at least. Then I will have to dig up the roots. And then call in a tree surgeon to trim the remaining trees, all four of them. And then plant the new trees. I don’t know exactly how many I can fit in the space left, but at two feet apart, it should be about six.

I am pleased to announce that I did get an A star in my GCSE biology, despite not knowing how the plants under the tarpaulin were getting their carbon dioxide. I think there is nothing wrong with the difficulty of GCSEs – it’s just that the grade boundaries are very low. For Paper 2 in GCSE Biology, you only needed to get 69% to get an A star. And I don’t think any of the questions were unfair, so why have such a low boundary for the highest grade possible?

Today I bravely peeled back the tarpaulin and confronted the leafy subculture underneath.

The jungle under the tarpaulin

The dominant weed by miles is a form of umbrella grass which somebody kindly gave me several years ago. He omitted to tell me that it would take over the garden. (Why do people do this? I always tell my friends when I’m giving them something that will seed itself or do runners all over the place and which they will never ever be able to eradicate if they decide they don’t want it any more.) There was the occasional bittercress plant and some clover type stuff, but not much of it. As I pulled up the grass, I put the slugs under another part of the tarpaulin, hoping that they would get to work on whatever was under there.

I did not forget to stop and admire the garden a little. The hibiscus in the far left corner, in front of the huge blue-green conifer, is looking very pink at the moment. I don’t know whether it will get dug up and moved when the pond and lawn are built, but for now it’s staying and looking very pretty. The picture isn’t as good as it could be because the sun is too bright, but never mind. You get the idea.

Hibiscus in far left corner, looking very pink

As far as progress goes, I have cleared out the area of bare ground behind the bay tree and moved some slabs of paving foundation onto it. This will give me an additional place to put the plants when the works are carried out in the winter. But it’s still a big problem, working out where I am going to put them.

I wonder at what stage the garden achieves a maximum growth rate. It is over a month since the summer solstice, and the evenings are noticeably drawing in, but the ground is warmer now and the plants have plenty of energy from previous weeks. All I know is that at this time of year there is no time for Renovation and only time for Maintenance.

View from above

Quite a lot of time has to be spent watering my 157 pots. It may be only 156 now, because I think the lupin has died. I cut it back after flowering, but I think I cut it back too much. I will wait and see. I liked the lupin and was only cutting it back because I thought it might have a better chance if I took off some of its leaves to reduce transpiration. If it has died, maybe I will grow some more from seed when I finally reach the stage of being able to plant things.

As usual, the Willowherb Elimination Stakes were won by the willowherb. I am not sure if I ever really entered the competition this year. I am having trouble not just with the weeds I can see, but also the ones under the tarpaulin. It may be possible for you to see the bulges under the tarpaulin on the right hand side of the picture. The bulges are not gas from putrefying dead animals which got themselves trapped under the tarpaulin, but from the weeds that are happily growing in blue light and gobbling up the carbon dioxide from respiring animals and microorganisms in this cosy micro-climate. (In an earlier post I said I did not know where the plants were getting their carbon dioxide from. My mum kindly texted me while I was on holiday to explain that the carbon dioxide came from respiration. This is, of course, obvious. If it turns out that I still got an A star for my GCSE biology that I took last month, that will prove there is something wrong with the exams).

My biggest problem with the next stage of Renovation is going to be to work out where to put the plants while it is being carried out. Some of them can go in the greenhouse (they can’t go there at the moment, because it is too hot) and the perennials can go in the passage by the side of the house where the sheds are (they can’t go there at the moment because there’s not enough light for non-dormant plants). Perhaps I can even put the deciduous plants in the garage for a few days, since they won’t be photosynthesising.

But for now, I shall just continue to weed, cut back, mow and water until the relentless pace of growth relents a bit.

The law of the jungle is not what Rudyard Kipling said it was. The law of the jungle is that at a certain time of the year, everything in the garden grows so fast that I cannot keep up with it and it turns into a jungle. I had to move some of my plant pots off the patio because the plants were getting too big to fit them all on there. Meanwhile the marjoram and campanula are having a ball. And I really should have pruned that apple tree in the winter.

Plants doing exactly what they want at the bottom left of my garden

Exactly a year ago I took a picture of the side border (see this post). I carefully left the lychnis to grow, and this is what I got.

Side border with lychnis (and other jungle plants)

But there are compensations. The evening air is redolent with the scent of jasmine from my non-dead plant. (In fact, the air is redolent all day long, but it sounds even nicer when it’s the evening air). And I can feel pleased with myself over how nice I am being to the bees by letting all these flowers take over my garden.

We’ve had a few weeks of almost uninterrupted sunshine. I can’t remember when we last had a sunnier spring and summer. I have been falling in love with my Hebe, which is covered in blue-purple flowers. It’s a bit noisy, with all the humming going on from all the bees visiting it, but very beautiful.

Hebe in full flower

In fact, the whole of the side border at the front of the house is maturing very nicely. The Trachelospermum jasminoides (that’s the great leafy thing in the foreground) is just coming into flower, as is the non-dead Jasminum officinale (behind the Hebe). The foxes haven’t dug up the pulmonaria recently, and there is getting less and less room for weeds. All good. The magenta flowers at the end belong to some lychnis, which self seeds itself in different places every year – I even saw some in a neighbour’s front garden a few houses along the road. I think it prefers sun, so it made a bad choice growing at the end of the passageway, but it seems to be making the best of its situation.

The side border at the front of the garden

Dave, usually described in these posts as “my very patient boyfriend”, died on 12 April this year. I had been thinking about whether I should include this sad event in my blog, as it is meant to be about gardening and not about tragedy. But each time I think about my garden plans, and especially the pond, I think about Dave and how much time I spent discussing the plans with him, and how much we would have enjoyed sitting by the edge of the pond and seeing who could spot the most newts. Although Dave didn’t do any of the Renovation, he helped to obtain some of the plants and he was very much involved in the planning. When the pond is built, there will be other people to show it to, but there won’t be Dave.

At the time of Dave’s death, the garden was waking up after one of the longest, deepest winters that I can remember. The jasmine, which I thought was dead, started producing little shoots. The sun shone from dawn to dusk and the rain stayed away for days on end. It seemed impossible that anyone could die when everything was so bright, so alive, so energetic. I made my trips to and from the hospital, and still the sun shone, and I felt that surely Dave could not leave my life now, not when everything was beginning again.

But Dave is gone, and the garden is still shoving out more shoots than it knows what to do with, and the pond will be built, and the newts will move in, and maybe one day, when I look down and see my reflection in the water, maybe just for a moment I will see Dave’s next to mine, as if he were looking into the pond with me.