Helen's Garden Renovation Project

Suddenly we got a mild day with no rain forecast, and so it was time to lay the first stepping stone. I had already dug the hole for it. I hammered in two pegs (small pieces of Leylandii branch) to mark the level of the top of the slab. Then I buried some rubble from the path that I broke up, thumped it with a piece of wood to compact it, filled in the gaps with smaller pieces of rubble and soil, then compacted it again. I put a layer of sharp sand down, and compacted that. Then I made some mortar in the ratio 4 litres of sharp sand to 1 litre of cement, and put it on top of the sand.

At this point I realised that I was going to have to make an awful lot of mortar. I read somewhere that a good depth was 5 cm of mortar, and that’s about what I put down. I made five batches using 5 litres of dry mix and it was hard work. But I did it. I used my small spirit level to make sure the mortar mix was level, and then put my paving slab down, and it did come to the right height. But it wasn’t level! I felt very aggrieved about that, given that I had thought my foundation was level. Tapping the highest bits of the slab with the mallet in the hope of making them a bit lower made very little difference, so I had to lift the slab and scoop out bits. Eventually I decided that it was good enough, and that the slab had an uneven surface so was never going to come out perfectly level anyway. I stood a few feet from it and looked at it carefully and decided that it looked perfectly all right, which is the only test that matters.

I was thinking of laying a second slab tomorrow because the weather may be all right then too, but I think I probably won’t. One reason is that my wrist and back are a bit tired from today’s exertions. Another is that I want to make sure the paving slab is set so if I stand on it, it won’t matter. But the main reason is that I want to see whether my job is good enough quality – will the slab stay put without wobbling or not?

I am pretty sure I over-engineered this stepping stone. I could do all the others the same way, but it’s a lot of labour and a lot of materials. Next time I will use more rubble and about half the amount of mortar.

There wasn’t much point in taking a picture of the stepping stone because it just looks like a stepping stone, but so that this entry can have a picture, here is an overview of the mess the garden is currently in.

Overview of the garden in January

The stepping stone I laid is at the extreme right of the picture, next to the green plastic pot. You will notice that there are a lot of white bags. These are the charity bags that come through my door every few weeks and they are all full of leaves. I will have to find another home for the leaves because the plastic in the bags doesn’t survive being outside for very long.

Actually, scrub that last entry. So far it is not particularly good for the garden that I have been made redundant, because I am now thinking that I will have plenty of time in the New Year and therefore don’t have to make too much effort now. But in my defence I will say that the weather has been normal for the time of year; i.e. either it is freezing, and too cold for making mortar, or raining, and too wet for making mortar. As all future development depends on the stepping stones being in place, this means no progress has been made on the garden directly. I have, however, been working hard on tidying up the garage, which eventually will enable me to find all my tools and other things which have been buried under layers and layers of disorder, thus making it easier and cheaper to get on with things as soon as the weather gets more reasonable.

Today it was a bit damp but sometimes sunny, and I confronted the leafiness of the shallow pond.

Leaves in shallow pond

I have been getting the leaves out with a sieve, which sounds much easier than it actually is. I think a coarser sieve would be easier to use because the water would drain out faster and the holes would take longer to block up with blanket weed. There are now fewer leaves in the pond than the picture shows, but it’s still too many.

The callicarpa, which is still in pots, has been happily berrying. This picture is slightly over-exposed but still very purple.

Callicarpa berries

The Garden Renovation Project has just had its best news since the project began – I have been made redundant from the day job and will be leaving just before Christmas. Obviously this means that I have much more time available to make Progress. It also means that I will have to start adding to this blog little bits of evidence of how good I would be in a new job, just in case any potential new employers start reading it to get some information about me.

I have started preparing the holes and foundation for the stepping stones, but the weather keeps being unsuitable. Either it is too cold, or too wet. I suppose this is what you would expect for November. The forecast for today was looking promising, but as it was still drizzling at nine o’clock and the sky looked very grey, I decided to postpone the task, thus displaying a flexible attitude and using my common sense. I cleared some more of the leaves up instead. There is a hole in my gardening gloves, but I am not afraid to get my hands dirty.

This week it has been dry some of the time, and on Monday and today I took the path foundations up. I was lucky – the foundation mix was very soft. It must have been at least 5 parts of sand to cement. Each section took only a few taps with the pickaxe to remove, and now, apart from needing to remove the crumbs, the job is finished. The temperature on Monday was ideal for heavy work – just a few degrees above freezing. Today it has been much milder and indeed, a bit warmer than was comfortable.

The path foundations broken up and stacked into piles

I also made a bit of progress on chopping up the remains of the bay tree, and gathered up some of the leaves. The beech tree next door, whose leaves they are, is now almost bare, so it will be worth putting in the effort next week to get rid of more leaves.

This is a significant milestone, because I have now undone all the things that I now think I did wrong when I had my first stab at making the garden, fifteen years ago. All the hard landscaping has been disposed of and all the plants that were in the wrong place have been dug up. From now on, the only way is forward. Unless I make some new mistakes, of course.

So I now find that the next job is to lay the first four stepping stones. I have the hardcore (lots), cement and sand and there are only three possible reasons for delaying the job. One is that my forearms are a bit trembly from all that pickaxing and lifting heavy bits of mortar, and need a rest. The other two are the weather: heavy rain, or a temperature that is too cold for making mortar.

Every time autumn comes along, I realise I have forgotten about the sheer quantity of leaves that come down and which I have to get rid of.

Leafy overview of the right hand side of the garden

Since my last entry, I have filled in the hole left by the bay tree (near enough) and taken up the slabs of the path. I still need to break up the foundation – after removing the leaves.

I was not expecting a lot of autumn colour from my new plants, because they are so young, but one of my blueberries has gone a beautiful mixture of purple and red.

Red leaves on blueberry

The Euonymus europaeus Red Cascade has not managed any winged fruits, but is making a noticeable attempt to wear this autumn’s colours.

Euonymus colouring up for autumn

So, my tasks for November are to get rid of the leaves, chop up the bay tree into manageable pieces, and break up the path foundation. As usual, whether or not I achieve these will depend on the weather.

Today I finally finished murdering the bay tree, and what a job that was. It was often raining while I was tackling the roots with my loppers and saw, but there was shelter from the huge beech tree overhead, and it was hot work, so I think any drops that landed on me evaporated pretty quickly.

The bay tree, uprooted

I still have quite a bit of work to do, sawing up the stems into manageable pieces, getting the rootball out of the hole, and filling up the hole. I have managed to fill up the hole where the temporary pond was, so now I just have to fill up the hole left by the bay tree. This month I was hoping to take the path up as well, but that may still be possible if it doesn’t rain all the time. It will be easiest if I can fill the hole first and cover the area with plastic so that the fragments of rubble from the path are easy to sweep up.

This morning it was raining and it was far too soggy to carry on digging up the bay tree, so I went to Redfields Garden Centre just on the offchance that they might have a male golden variegated holly. And they did! So I bought one and planted him.

Ilex aquifolium ‘Myrtifolium Aurea Maculata’

I used some Rootgrow, which needs using up because it only keeps for about a year. The label says that the holly reaches a height of 75cm after 10 years, but given that it’s almost that height now, and it only cost £10.99, I think I’ll take that information with a pinch of salt. It’s possible that it may not be happy in the location I have given it, because it won’t get a lot of sun, but if it can manage to grow a bit taller it will get more.

I know I was supposed to be digging up the bay tree and filling in the temporary pond this month, and not getting distracted by pretty prickly plants, but it will be much easier to continue with this work if it stops raining for a bit. Maybe next week.

Yesterday I emptied the temporary pond. Unfortunately there were still some newt tadpoles in the water. I managed to save some of them and transferred them to the shallow pond. I also encountered three adult frogs, but no adult newts. I thought about whether I wanted pond snails in the shallow pond, and I decided that I had done all right with them so far so I would put them in. I don’t know whether they will crawl up the wall and get into the raised pond, but I don’t suppose they will do any harm if they do.

I pulled the pond liner partly out of the pond because rain was forecast later and I didn’t want the pond to fill up again. Then I put a few bricks and other things in the hole to help frogs get out if they should jump in without noticing that all the water had gone.

After emptying the temporary pond

Today we had a fine, dry day and I decided it was a good day for shredding things, so I cut bits off the bay tree and shredded them. I also moved the compost bins out of the way. I have been advertising the compost bins in Sainsbury’s and have managed to get rid of one out of the three I had left. Digging up the bay tree may be a harder job than digging up the Leylandii. It may take me more than one session. It will also be a big job to fill the pond. I had forgotten how deep it was.

The bay tree after pruning

The level of water in the shallow pond continues to fall. I think it must be leaking from more than one place. I am thinking of various ideas about what to do. One option is to remove the liner entirely and replace it with a new liner that comes up along the back of the edging blocks. I don’t know whether this will affect the stablity of the edging blocks. Another possibility is to dig up the soil at the back of the two edges of the pond that don’t butt onto the patio, and then leave it, and see which bits become damp after rainfall. I would hope this would tell me whether there are particular places where the pond is leaking from. Taking up the patio to observe the edge that butts onto the patio would be drastic, but again could be done. However, I am going to leave this to be done after completion of the main project. I feel more strongly than ever it is time to bring this ship into the shore, and throw away the oars. Forever. I have had enough of the portable herbaceous border. I want a proper garden again.

So, I am still planning to get the right hand part of the garden finished this winter if the weather is unexceptional. I should be able to get the bay tree dug up, the pond filled in and the path taken up by the end of October. I can then use the rubble from the path foundations for the stepping stones in November, and also work out the layout for the section. Then in December I can get quotes for any work that I cannot do myself, and have the work done in January. Then order lots of soil for the lawn, get it level and fertilised, and sow the lawn seed in April. And if you believe this will happen without any further slippage, you have much more faith in human nature and circumstances than I have.

After I had finished waterproofing the shallow pond and mending the water butts, we had lots and lots of rainfall, which I was very pleased about because it meant that my repairs could be thoroughly tested. I was only partly pleased about the results, though. One of the water butts appears to have been completely mended, with no signs of any leaks. The other is better than it was, but is still losing some water. I think it had a bigger crack in it than the other one, and putting a second patch over the crack may be successful.

As for the pond, well, it’s also better than it was. The join between the mortar and the pond liner is not at a constant level, and over to the left hand side of the pond, the water line is above the join. In other places it is below the join. I will have to observe the level of the pond over some days as it gets topped up with rain from time to time, and try to work out where it is leaking from. The liner and the mortar appear to be sound, so the most likely place is where there is a fold in the liner and it is harder to get a watertight join. In this particular example I have accidentally left a gap in the sealant, so this could be a place where the water is leaking out.

A fold in the pond liner

However, this setback is not going to stop progress, as the shallow pond is still usable and I am not going to empty it out again any time soon to try another repair. So I went over to the temporary pond and got ready to start battle.

The temporary pond

When you have a mass of vegetation like this, it is too heavy to pull out of the pond in one lump, so I had to break off bits, and I also had to saw through the water lily’s rhizome. I wanted to save some of the plants and put them in quarantine in the shallow pond. The reason for the quarantine is that the pond contains the highly invasive New Zealand Pygmy weed, which I have decided not to keep in my new ponds. I did, however, want to keep the Ponderia cordata, Iris laevigata ‘Midnight’ and the water lily Rose Magnolia. So I broke off sections of them, washed them well to remove all the pondweed that I could see, and planted them in new containers. The pond is too shallow for the water lily to be happy, but I am hoping that once it’s out of quarantine, I can put it in the raised pond, which it should like a lot better.

Plants in quarantine in the shallow pond

And then I tipped all the rest of the vegetation out of the temporary pond. I can now tip out the rest of the water and any creatures lurking in it, and start filling the hole in.

The wreckage left after removing the plants from the temporary pond

I hope that the displaced creatures will turn up in the shallow pond. The pondskaters have already moved in.

Today was a big day for the shallow pond. I cracked open my tube of Gold Label Pond and Aquarium Sealer, which had been sitting on my bookcase for six months, and squirted it all along the join between the mortar and the liner. I had calculated that the recommended 5mm bead width would leave me with plenty over, but I think I ended up applying it thicker in some places. It is quite tiring squeezing the trigger of the sealant tube gun, and my bead was not always smooth, but that doesn’t matter. I took the following picture standing on the back of the raised pond.

Shallow pond waterproofing overview

And here is a close up view of my waterproofing attempt.

The corner of the shallow pond in front of the pieris

I had enough left to repair the water butts. My last attempt, documented at Water butt repair lasted less than a year. So I removed the old silicone sealant (very easy) and stuck on some patches of pond liner with the rest of my Gold Label. They stuck very easily, and I also applied some sealant around the pipes connecting the water butts to each other and the drain pipe, and I managed to use the whole of the rest of the tube.

Water Butt Repair Attempt 2

Originally I had planned to use the leftover sealant to stick the rainbow cobbles to the liner, but I decided that I would rather find out first whether I had succeeded in getting the pond waterproof, and then buy some more sealant to stick the cobbles to the liner. The manufacturers recommend using their black sealant rather than the colourless for sticking stones to liner because it’s thicker and thus is better at holding the stones in place until the sealant is cured.

The sealant was easy to apply and came off my fingers with just water. Can I believe that such a benign substance can really keep my pond stuck together underwater? Well, we have some heavy rain forecast for Sunday and I hope that I will find out soon.

The repair to my patio (see last entry) seems to be satisfactory. I have tripped over two geraniums and a trowel so far, but have not tripped over my newly laid slab, despite not having re-grouted the area yet. So I will press on with laying my stepping stones and see what happens.