Helen's Garden Renovation Project

Today I put in a good two hours’ work. I cleared the last compost bin out of the side passage. The way is now clear to getting the air conditioning unit moved (you can see the pipes on the left hand side) and getting the area paved over apart from a little space for the winter flowering jasmine to continue to attempt to grow. You can just about see the winter flowering jasmine against the fence on the right. It is practically in the dark, so it has done very well to flower at all.

I dug up some of the marjoram at the entrance to the side passage, just behind where I stood to take the photograph, so that I could put a compost bin on that patch of ground. I want to use it to store some of the topsoil that will be dug up when the path is laid. I will almost certainly be short of topsoil when the plan is finished, because I am replacing a sunken pond with a raised one, so I want to keep as much as I can store.

I have also cleared over a third of the annual planting area. I dug up the escallonia. This was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. If you want a sturdy shrub that grows vigorously and doesn’t budge in a strong wind, escallonia has to be a good bet. But it needs too much pruning to keep it looking nice, and it doesn’t get enough sun in the position I planted it to produce many flowers. It layers itself readily, so I have some of its children in pots in case I change my mind and want to have escallonia ‘Crimson Spire’ again.

I also finally exhausted my collection of plant pots, apart from the smallest ones. I could buy some more (I am sure Wilkinson’s would do me a good deal) but I think I have a ridiculous number of pots as it is, and it will take all day to keep them watered in summer. So when I dug up the hellebore – beautiful deep purple orientalis job – I just moved it to the other side of the garden instead of putting it in a pot.

Oh, and I went to the garden centre on Saturday (Redfields, in Fleet) and bought some reduced-price snowdrops in pots, so when I am ready, I can plant them, and unlike the 50 dry bulbs I bought from B&Q in 1996, they might actually get established!

So I have decided to plant a load of annuals in the right hand border. The area, shown in the picture below, is the strip between the bay tree and the camellia, and it is about 4.4m by 1.8m (about 14.5 feet by 6 feet).

In the picture you can see just the left hand edge of the camellia. What’s that pink blob? I think it’s done a flower. I shall have to go out and check tomorrow. The messy shrub to the right of centre is an escallonia, and the stalks at the left hand side are the kerria. The kerria is just beginning to come into leaf. I am going to dig both the escallonia and the kerria up. The annuals will all have finished their business by November, and therefore I can scoop them all up and put them in the compost, and leave the ground clear for the trench for the electric cable to the greenhouse to be dug. Although I have sown a few annuals from time to time, I have never planted up such a large area with annuals, and probably never will again unless I move to a house with a bigger garden. So this is an interesting experiment for me.

I thought about planting half hardy annuals, but then I would have to germinate them indoors and I haven’t got my greenhouse yet, and there wouldn’t be enough windowsill space in the house. Also it would be a lot more work because I would have to transplant them to their positions outside, and I don’t want this mini-project to distract me from the main project. If I plant hardy annuals, I can sow them in March and then I just have to weed them, water them and thin them out. The disadvantage is that if they decide they like the accommodation, they may leave their children behind for next year. I don’t think that would happen so much with the half hardy annuals because most of their children would germinate too early and get killed in the April frosts. On the other hand, I could do with some more interesting weeds. I am bored with bittercress and willowherb. So I have decided to sow some hardy annuals.

According to the gardening books, it is quite straightforward to make a display of annuals:

(1) Weed the area, then rake it until it looks like dark brown breadcrumbs.

(2) Use some sand to divide the area into smaller areas. Use curved lines to make it look informal.

(3) Rake out several parallel shallow straight line trenches across each area.

(4) Sow seeds thinly in the trenches, using a different packet of seeds for each area. Put tall plants at the back and short ones at the front.

(5) Rake at right angles to the trenches to fill them in.

(6) Water.

(7) When the seeds and the weeds germinate, you will be able to tell which ones are weeds because the annuals are growing in a straight line, so you can pull the weeds up early before they really get going.

(8) Thin out the seedlings if they are growing on top of each other. If you like, transplant some of the thinnings into the gaps between rows so that they don’t look like you sowed them in a straight line any more.

What they don’t tell you, though, is how many packets of seeds you need to buy. You can find out how many seeds there are in a packet; for example, there are 150 seeds in my packet of lavatera, but a massive 2000 in the night scented stocks packet. However, they don’t tell you what area these seeds should cover. They just tell you to sow them thinly. I think the seed suppliers should take a tip from the paint manufacturers and say what the coverage should be, assuming that you only sow one coat of seeds.

Anyway, I went to Wilkinson’s in Aldershot this lunchtime, and bought the following:

Alyssum, carpet of snow, 900 seeds, 49p
Cornflower, double black, 250 seeds, £1.59
Cornflower, double blue, 250×2 seeds (2 packets @ 59p), £1.18
Larkspur, giant imperial mixed, 600 seeds, 39p
Lavatera, Pastel mixed, 150 seeds, 39p
Poppy, Peony black, 750 seeds, £1.79
Stock, night scented, 2000 seeds, 49p.

I didn’t mean to buy two packets of the blue cornflowers; it just happened. I was obviously very attracted to them.

Total price £3.26 because they were all “buy one get one free”. The more expensive packets are Johnsons, while the cheaper ones are Wilkinson’s own brand. I remember BBC Gardeners’ World sowing an annual bed for £20 a few years ago. Theirs was probably bigger than mine. All the same, I bet they didn’t get their seeds from Wilkinson’s.

According to my original project plan, I was going to get the greenhouse installed first, in late winter or early spring. However, I realised that when the greenhouse was delivered, I would have to store it somewhere until it was installed, and the garage is a bit full. It would help if I could get the tool store in place first, because then I could move the tools out of the garage, freeing up space for the greenhouse. Also, getting the water butts installed is a big priority, because I think it is going to be a hot summer again. Now that I am no longer using the side passage for compost storage, it makes sense to have the air conditioning unit in the side passage rather than against the back wall, so that needs moving. And if I got the side passage paved over, it would make it much easier to install the tool store, since I would have a level base to put it on, and the same thing applies to the water butts. So this is the plan now:

(1) Get the air conditioning unit moved. This, apparently, is not as easy as it sounds, because the refrigerant inside it has to be taken out and put back in.

(2) Get the side passage paved over, and patch over the bit of paving where the air conditioning unit used to be. Also get the contractors to remove the three posts that are set in concrete – or wait until the time of the greenhouse installation if it would be cheaper to do that all at once.

(3) Install water butts. I may get the man who cleans and repairs my gutters to do this, because it sounds as if it is easy, but I know it can be tricky, and I might need to buy a new downpipe if I do it wrong. And I need one of the joints in the gutter at the front of the house repairing so he might as well do the water butts while he is here.

(4) Buy and assemble tool store. This I am sure I can manage myself.

(5) Put tools in tool store and tidy up garage.

(6) Order greenhouse and get it installed.

I want to get the bits of gardening work that I can’t do myself done off season because it is usually cheaper, and also because October and November tend to be fairly quiet times for my maths tuition business, compared with April to June, which are frantic. So I will be aiming to get the greenhouse installed in November. Until then I can’t plant anything permanent in the right hand border, because that is going to get dug up to lay an electric cable for the greenhouse. However, I don’t want to have a stretch of bare ground all summer because it will be overrun with weeds and I will have a job trying to keep them under control.

After promising my friends and family for several weeks that I was going to start a blog to keep them updated on my garden renovation progress, I’ve finally done it! I have just been out to move some more compost and dig up a few plants, but it is now raining too much, so I thought I would get the blog started.

I have never written a blog before. For those of you who have never written a blog either, the screen that I am typing into looks different from the screen you are looking at. There are seven buttons at the right hand side of the screen, and I am a bit worried to see that one of them says “Post slug”. I am having enough trouble keeping them off my primulas without adding them to my blog. No doubt it will all become clear as I get more experienced.

This morning, as the weather forecasters had promised, we had a couple of inches of snow. So, a good day for taking photographs, not going to work, and not gardening.

I called this post “Winter is attempted” because by noon most of the snow had melted, and then it started raining. We may get some further snowfalls in February, but no one is promising anything.

Today I decided to tackle the bigger of the two conifers and dig it up completely. I dug a large circular hole around the conifer and used long-handled loppers to cut off its roots as I went along. It was quite hard work because of the quantity of soil I had to shift, but it wasn’t very daunting. Now I just have the other conifer to dig up, which I will do another day. I want to keep the tree stumps but saw them up into logs and leave them somewhere as a refuge for wildlife.

Today I continued to work on removing the conifers behind the blackberry frame. As you can see, I have trimmed off all the branches. I have also sawn off the top of the bigger conifer so the trunks are now the same height. It was quite hard work sawing the top off the conifer and it was a bit nerve-racking as I wasn’t sure how the top would fall, but in the end it fell gracefully with hardly a clunk. Now I just have to dig up what is left.

Yvonne came for a brief visit to check with me that the general shape of her design would be acceptable. She is going to put in a diagonal lawn, edged neatly with the same small blocks that have been used for the patio edging, but the diagonal will point to the grey-blue conifer in the far left corner of the garden, not to the greenhouse. The curves in the existing patio will be changed to straight lines, and all the lines will go either along the edge of the house, or at right angles to the edge of the house, or at 45 degrees to the other lines. This includes the greenhouse, which will be octagonal. Yvonne proposes having the newt pond and the frog pond right next to each other. The two ponds will have a square cross-section with a diagnonal line separating the two ponds. The frog pond will be a few inches deep, and will be at about ground level or slighly above, while the newt pond will be raised up and will have a brick wall around it and some slabs at the top of the wall which people can sit on when they want to look at the newts.

The design is exciting, but scary. For a garden designer, this is probably a very ordinary design, but for me it is far removed from anything I would create myself. The lawn is quite small – it has to be, because so much else has to fit into the plan – but will it look silly because it is too small? One corner of the lawn will cut into the patio. Will this look as if it interlocks neatly, or will it look as if I measured the lawn up wrongly and ended up having it overflowing into the patio? But I have made my decision. I will be brave, and I will trust Yvonne’s experience, and I will make this design a reality.

One thing I am very pleased about is the location of the pond. It is about as far away from the neighbouring deciduous trees as it could possibly be, so that will help reduce the number of leaves that I have to clear out. Its shape may also make it possible for me to construct a couple of nets to put over the top in autumn. The pond is nearer the house than the present pond, so that means it will be more in the shade, but it is further from the leylandii on the left hand side, so with luck it will get enough light altogether. Having the pond nearer the house makes it more likely that I will be able to hear the frogs in spring. Although noise generally annoys me, I would be happy to hear the frogs enjoying themselves.

Today Yvonne came round to measure up the garden ready for drawing up her plan. I have tried to measure the garden before, and it is not easy, even when there is nothing in it to get in the way. I watched Yvonne, in between making her cups of tea, and learnt the following:

(1) You need a long tape measure.

(2) In fact, you need more than one tape measure. Three is good. Lay one of them along an edge you know is straight, like along the house wall, and use the others to make measurements at right angles to that.

(3) Do not write down all the measurements on a piece of plain paper, because when you get home, you will find that something doesn’t match up. Draw the plan as you go along using a piece of graph paper.

(4) Allow lots of time. My garden is not a big one and is not a complicated shape, but it took Yvonne two and a half hours.

(5) Do not use a brown pencil to write with because when you drop it in the undergrowth you will have no chance of finding it again.

Today Yvonne came to see me for the first time. She came round in time to take some photographs before it got too dark, and we talked for an hour about it. I gave Yvonne a document I had written called “Garden Aspirations”. It listed my ingredients for a perfect garden, which are:

• Pond for newts and water plants
• Another pond for frogs and birds
• Tool storage place
• Greenhouse
• Somewhere to put compost bins that is more convenient than the side of the house
• Vegetable plots
• Fruit trees and plants
• Lawn (but not necessarily a big one)

I also wrote down a list of things I like:

• Stepping stones in plant patches for easy maintenance
• Natural stone generally
• Neat edges to beds and borders
• Rockery
• Changes in height (difficult in a level plot!)
• Untouched corners for wildlife to use

and made a list of things I don’t like. I am pleased to note that this is a lot shorter than the list of things I do like.

• Gravel (gets everywhere and gets weeds in it)
• Decking (far inferior to stone)
• Bog garden (dreadful to weed and looks terrible in the winter)

Then I listed the jobs I like doing and the ones I don’t like doing. I wasn’t really conscious of not liking certain jobs, but I decided that if there was anything that I was neglecting, it was probably because I didn’t like doing it.

Jobs I like:

• Propagating, especially by seed
• Weeding if not too onerous
• Mowing the lawn
• Harvesting
• Light trimming of plants

Jobs I don’t like:

• Serious amounts of pruning
• Lawn edging
• Weeding if I think I am losing the battle

I also made a list of plants that I had got and wanted to keep, plants that I had got but would rather not have, plants that I hadn’t got but would like to have, and plants that I hadn’t got and had no intention of acquiring.

Immediately Yvonne came up with some ideas. She considered that the greenhouse was essential, given my love of propagating, and suggested getting a pretty hexagonal or octagonal one that could go in the right-hand far corner, which is the sunniest position in the garden, and form a focal point instead of being hidden away somewhere. She also suggested putting a tool store against the wall in the narrow passage where the compost bins are at the moment, and moving the compost bins somewhere else. She also said that to make the garden look longer, using the diagonals would help. Now, I did actually know this from reading a few assorted garden design books, but it still seemed weird to me to align things diagonally, and I needed the confidence to do it.

I really felt good after talking about gardens with Yvonne because she is so enthusiastic. I felt that there was some hope for the garden, and instead of seeing the renovation project as a long haul, I felt that it would be really exciting. I explained that what I needed was a complete plan that I could work to, but do in stages over about three years. My reasons for running the project over a long period instead of doing it over a couple of weeks were:

(1) I will be able to do more of it myself, which will be cheaper and more fun than hiring professionals.

(2) I will be able to see the garden evolving, and will be able to make any corrections necessary as it develops, whereas if I do it all in one go I might not realise what the mistakes are until it is too late.

(3) I am a patient person who enjoys the journey as much as the destination.

(4) The garden has quite a few mature shrubs in it. If I renovate the garden in stages, it won’t look completely bleak and bare at any time.

(5) If I know in advance which plants I want, I can buy small specimens or seeds and grow them on myself for a year or two, saving a great deal of money. I still get satisfaction from pointing to my magnificent hibiscus in the frong garden and saying, “I grew that from seed, you know.”

I was highly amused when Yvonne went through my list of plants that I don’t want. They are:

• Mahonia (I know it flowers when nothing else is, but it’s still ugly).
• Large-leaved clematis (actually I like them, but they always die).
• Anything too sprawly that looks a mess whatever you do with it. (Would be prepared to try again with heather and try and remember to trim it each year).
• Anything spiny that needs pruning (e.g. Berberis).
• Mop-head hydrangea (don’t know why, just don’t like it).
• Cotoneaster (there is enough of it out in front).
• Roses (I already have two, in pots, which were both presents).

She didn’t argue about the berberis, cotoneaster and roses (roses don’t grow well in sandy soil, apparently) but did her best to change my mind about the mahonia and mop-head hydrangea. This is exactly what I would expect from a plant lover. She didn’t convince me, but it was lovely that she tried.