Helen's Garden Renovation Project

Eurgh, you’re so wet. You’re spoiling my grouting. Where did you get that liner? It looks like it’s seen better days. Can’t you lose a few pounds? I think my slabs are going to give way.

Yes, the pond is on the critical path.

All progress now depends on getting the shallow pond waterproof so that the contents of the temporary pond can be moved to the shallow pond and the temporary pond filled in. The other activity that matters is to get the stepping stones concreted in. The reason this is important is that I need to find out whether this is a job I am capable of doing myself or whether I need to get it done professionally, which I would want to do at the same time as the final landscaping work.

My mortar repair has now had two weeks to cure, so like a quack doctor I have declared it cured whether it is or not. I have applied two coats of V8 Pondseal and will put on one or two more later on today. Although I scraped away all the loose bits last week, the mortar is still quite crumby and I would not be surprised if I find that I have to repair it again within two years. I hope that next time I will be able to do a better job.

I decided to test my ability to lay slabs on mortar by replacing a loose slab in the patio. This is the hole that I chiselled out for the new mortar.

The place where the loose slab is supposed to go

I then made up 1 litre of 4:1 mortar, stuck it in the hole, and put the slab on top. I tried to get it as level as possible given that the slabs are naturally uneven and weren’t level themselves. It was quite easy to get it approximately right. The spirit level is obviously the best guide, but when the slabs are uneven, putting your head on the patio and looking sideways at it can help too. But I have now found what is really, really hard, and that is to just leave it alone when it is approximately good enough instead of making continual micro-adjustments. With any luck, when laying stepping stones, there won’t be so many adjustments to make because each slab is separate.

The slab replaced

I won’t know whether I have done a good job or not until I have replaced the grouting and then can find out if I keep tripping over the slab.

Encouraged by this possible success, I decided to start work on the diagonal path behind the apple trees. The reason for choosing this one first is that if I get it wrong it won’t be as noticeable as if I get the other path wrong. I ruthlessly pruned the buddleia, then took away the compost bag liners covering the soil under the diagonal path, set up some string and adjusted the spacing so the slabs are 22 cm apart. This is about the maximum that is comfortable for my stride length. I have made them parallel to the lawn edging. I want them to be the same level as the lawn edging, but the hard standing around the greenhouse is lower than the lawn edging and I need to have the first slab in the path at about the same level as the hard standing. So I think I will have that slab lower than the other three.

The diagonal path measured out

Each slab is 60cm square, and I calculate that if I use 2.5 cm of mortar to bed them on, I will need to mix 9 litres of mortar for each one. This is nearly twice as much as I made for the pond repair. This means that I probably have only enough endurance to lay two stepping stones in a session. It also means that I am going to have to go to B&Q and buy a lot more cement. But that is a problem for another day. The pond is on the critical path and must take precedence.

Now we have chalked up another wet weather record (the wettest summer for 100 years) the rain seems to be resting on its laurels and we have a fairly dry week coming up. Today I decided it was time to tackle the shallow pond. The problem is that the water leaks out of the pond at the join between the mortar (or render – I am not sure of the difference) and the liner, whereas I want the pond to be able to fill up right to the top. The mortar has been applied in a slope, which means that the join between the mortar and the liner is very thin, and it’s also quite ragged, so it would be difficult to apply a bead of pond sealant compound, which is what I want to do.

Original mortar, with ragged edge

So I chiselled off the thin edge of the mortar, roughened the rest of the mortar up with lots of scratches from the chisel, and then mixed up some new compound to make a vertical edge that would form a better junction with the pond liner.

Mixing mortar is not something I have ever attempted before, but I have iced plenty of cakes, and I read the books and did my best. I mixed it in an old washing up bowl, and I used 1 litre of cement to 4 litres of sand. At least one of my books said that sharp sand was better than building sand, but I think that was wrong in this case, because sharp sand has lots of big bits of grit in it, whereas I think it needed to be smooth. I then realised to my horror that I had probably made far too much. Unlike cake icing, you can’t just put the excess in the fridge and eat it later with a teaspoon.

I was careful not to make the beginner’s mistake of putting too much water in the mixture, but I may have made the slightly more advanced mistake of not putting enough water in it. I don’t know what happens if it hasn’t got enough water in it, but it may not be very good. I kept wetting the old mortar as I applied the new and it probably ended up wet enough in the end. And I was pleased to find that although I had made a little too much, there was not a lot left over. I made it into a little square patty and left it to bake on the tarpaulin so I can then use it for hardcore for laying my stepping stones. Then I washed everything out and poured the washings onto the tarpaulin, where the water can evaporate over the next week, and then I can sweep the dust up and dispose of it.

I can’t pretend that the end result is going to look pretty.

My new mortar patched onto the old

However, I just want the pond not to leak at the moment. If I achieve that, I will stick lots of cobbles around the edge of the pond and they will hide most of the mortar. My cunning plan is to glue the cobbles that are further away from the edge to the liner, but not the ones that are right up against the edge. Then the cobbles further down the liner will stop the top ones rolling down to the bottom, but I can remove them if I need to make any more repairs to the mortar or the watertight seal.

So the plan is now to wait a few days, and then check to see if there are any bits that need improving, and make a small amount of mortar to mend them with if necessary, and then wait a few weeks for the concrete to cure, and then paint it with Pondseal.

And then I iced a cake. Much easier.

Chocolate cake, iced using knife, not pointing trowel

We have had some lovely sunshine for the Olympics, but now it looks like we’re back to the usual unsettled pattern. I managed to mow the lawns before this morning’s shower, and that was good enough for now.

Not only is Alice Hoffman still not dead, but is just getting started with some prolific flowering.

Fuchsia Alice Hoffman

Not such good news about my water butts. The repair that I made last year has not worked permanently on either of them. The repair lasted only a month or so on the butt nearest the living room. The butt nearest the kitchen has only just started leaking again, so the repair lasted for nearly a year. I am going to try repairing them again using the sealant that I have that is specially made for ponds, as it is supposed to carry on sticking even when permanently underwater. I bought the sealant in the spring but the weather has not allowed me to use it yet. The expiry date is April next year.

Here is another picture of my Giant Oriental Lilies because I still can’t believe I have managed to grow something so beautiful.

Giant Oriental Lilies (mixed)

We had a dry day today, and I spent over three hours in the garden. I first wanted to collect some photographic evidence of my plants’ willingness to forgive me for digging them up and moving them.

This is what my Discovery apple tree is doing at the moment:

Discovery apple

It won’t be long before this apple is ripe. Charles Ross is also producing fruit:

Charles Ross apple

And my hibiscus, which I grew from seed, is just starting to flower.

Hibiscus in flower

And how upset was the buddleia about being dug up not just once, but twice, because I put it in the wrong place at first? Not very, I would say.

Buddleia Black Knight

So that just shows it is possible to transplant trees and shrubs in the winter and have them flower and fruit next spring, as long as you make sure you do it when there will be record rainfall in the spring and summer of the following year. And, actually, I think the plants all look better than they did before I moved them. Possibly this is partly because of all the rain we’ve had, but I think it’s also because they are now in a much more open, sunnier position than they were, and are feeling all the better for it.

I was thinking about getting started with laying some foundation for the stepping stones behind the apple trees, but the wisteria had gone wisterical and I had to break up the long-standing feud between it and the burglar alarm box and the drainpipe. And the jasmine was getting too jazzy, so I had to trim that, and also next door’s monster golden conifer, and my monster Pelts Blue conifer too, so that the euonymus next to it has a sporting chance. And then there were all the weeds in the drive, and I had to carry on scrubbing the paving slabs to prevent them getting dangerously slippery with green slime. And the Upright Milfoil is distributing loose stems across the pond, obviously as an attempt at domination, so I planted some of them in the basket that used to belong to the Hottonia Palustris before it got eaten. And somehow all the morning went and it was too hot by then to do anything strenuous. This is why I never get any development work done in the summer.

The lilies that J Parkers sent me free of charge with my order have started flowering.

A Giant Oriental Lily (Mixed)

Not only does this lily look beautiful, but I can smell it at the other end of the garden. I tried planting a few lily bulbs some years ago but the plants got eaten, and so I gave up and never tried planting lilies again. But of course, if someone sends you the bulbs, you might as well plant them. I put lots of slug pellets around them at first, but apart from that have given them no protection. And nothing seems to have eaten them. Which is more than can be said for me. I went out at dusk on Wednesday to water my plants, and got bitten very itchily on my arms and face.

On the day of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, I lost the biggest competition on the gardening calendar: the Willowherb Elimination Stakes. For those who have never partaken in this great event, the rules are very simple: pull up all the willowherb before it sets seed. Today I found one with a couple of fluffy seedpods attached, and as I pulled it up, a few seeds drifted down to the soil. I am not disappointed, because I always lose.

We had a brief shower this morning, but apart from that it has been dry for a week, and I have now emptied out the shallow pond. Sorry to the frog who visited earlier this week, but alternative accommodation is just a few yards away. My aim is to stop the leak between the render around the stone edging and the pond liner by neatening up the render, filling any gaps, and then using a pond sealant to plug the gap between render and liner.

I also want to install some cobbles around the edge, gluing them to the liner with the pond sealant. I like white cobbles, but I think they would look strange with everything else being brown or black. So, a few weeks ago, I bought some rainbow cobbles from B&Q. You may not think that they look very pretty.

Boring sandy cobbles

In fact, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that they look like a load of potatoes. However, after giving them a quick scrub underwater, their appearance has been transformed.

Rainbow cobbles after washing the sand off

I need to wash the cobbles thoroughly, not just for appearance, but so that the glue will stick properly. This is quite a nice job to do in hot weather.

Suddenly, with very little warning, summer turned up. This meant that when I came home from work, I had to water my plants. While I was at it I pulled up the weeds sharing the pots (surprisingly few) and gave the plants some nice bonemeal and ericaceous granules, as appropriate.

It was a perfect day for sitting on the edge of the raised pond and looking at all the life going on within it. In the past week or so the water has cleared and now I can see just how many creatures there are in it. There are millions of very small round ones which are probably water fleas, and some mini-worms, and also some insects which could be water boatmen. I think these tiny little things are collectively responsible for eating some of my plants. But not all of them. The Upright Milfoil has won the day, with its beautiful foliage still intact. I have put it in deeper water and it’s more than equal to the challenge. I am wondering if it is mainly responsible for the clearing of the pond water, since the only other oxygenator still alive, the Water Crowfoot, is only just growing fast enough to avoid being eaten completely.

The Upright Milfoil growing uprightly and doing a fantastic oxygenating job

The shallow pond has no vegetation in it yet because I still need to repair it, but I was delighted to have a visitor.

A frog happily cooling off next to my luxury rainbow cobbles in the shallow pond

My path behind the apple trees is now overgrown, mainly with buddleia. I am probably still going to keep the path there, though, and just accept that in the summer months it’s a bit of a squeeze getting past. It does demonstrate that it’s worth checking the viability of paths in both summer and winter.

The path overgrown with buddleia and apple trees

And finally, when I opened the bag of ericaceous compost in the greenhouse, I found that it had turned into a giant ants’ nest. I still used the compost to mix in with ericaceous plant food and spread it around the base of my rhododendrons, camellia, blueberries and kalmia. I’m not sure whether these bits of nests will turn into new nests. If they do, I will have an awful lot of ants by the end of the summer.

The three readers of my blog will have noticed that there have been no entries for nearly a month. This is partly because I have been away on holiday but mainly because it simply will not stop raining. The damp weather started at the beginning of April – just after the hosepipe ban came into force. The hosepipe ban was lifted over a week ago, which we hoped would stop the rain, but no.

However, there is some hope that there may be some dry weather next week. When that happens, there will be a lot of maintenance tasks to do. The Willowherb Elimination Stakes are still in progress. And I do hope that one day I will be able to mend my shallow pond.

In the meantime, here is a colour combination that simply would not occur to an average garden designer.

Crocosmia with Lychnis

I planted the Crocosmia Lucifer deliberately. The Lychnis just turned up, as it always does, and I hadn’t the heart to pull it up.

Here is a Lychnis flower holding up its face against the rain. Brave little thing.

Lychnis in the rain

The rain continues, and I have not been able to repair the shallow pond yet. Maybe we will get a boiling hot October again and I can do it then.

Meanwhile, everything keeps growing, and the Plan is going to have to adapt itself to another new arrival – a Morello Cherry, which was a very kind leaving present from the parents of one of my students. I took a few photographs of myself with it, and chose the one that was most flattering to the tree, not to me.

Left to right: Cherry tree; me

I had been thinking about how much I would like a cherry tree that did fruit I could eat instead of just flowers and leaves, and suddenly I have one. I think I will put it at the right hand side of the garden, near the blackberries, or possibly in the front garden. It claims to be capable of reaching a height of 4-5 m, so it will be bigger than the apple trees, but not too enormous. And anyway, I can always prune it. The label has a knife and fork sign with “July. Aug.” next to it, but I think if I make the cherries into cherry ice cream I’ll probably eat them with a spoon. I have put the cherry tree into one of my square plastic pots with lots of organic compost.

I decided that the Phormiums had probably rotted away, and threw one of them into the soil mine, but as I was about to pick up the other one, I noticed it had a couple of tiny green shoots. So I put two bits of path under the pot so that the next ten days’ rainfall will drain away, and maybe it will survive. I put the five pots that contain bulbs aside, as they don’t need to be watered this summer. So I have gained one pot and lost six.

Pot count 58. Very good.

I have, I think, partly solved the mystery of why my Callitriche (starwort) and Hottonia (water violet) have failed to thrive. Something has eaten them. This thing has also taken chunks out of the Myosotis palustris, Ranunculus aquatilis and Veronica beccabunga. It hasn’t touched the Myriophyllum crispatum or the Equisetum japonicum. I am at a loss to work out what it could be, as the plants are far enough from the edge not to be in danger from land snails. I have seen pond skaters, but they eat insects. And of course, newts are also carnivorous, catching most of their prey on land. So I am completely baffled about what is eating the plants.

I think the problem is that the pond is out of balance. There is not much plant matter in there yet, and so it’s easy for whatever is eating them to eat the lot. I am hoping that the Myriophyllum and the Ranunculus will survive long enough to grow very big and healthy and oxygenate the pond themselves. If not, then the best thing is probably to buy a large quantity of oxygenators cheaply from a mail order company, and put them all in at once so that they can’t all get eaten.

The peony has no buds on it, and so I don’t think it will flower this summer. On Gardeners’ World, Monty Don said that peonies hold a grudge against being moved and can refuse to flower even three or four years after being moved. Since I moved it in 2007, and it has flowered at least twice since then, I think the time for it to register a protest has passed. Unfortunately there does not seem to be any statute of limitations for crimes against plants.

I made some more progress on pot reduction by planting the very congested flag iris in front of the thuja.

Number of pots = 63.

So far the weather has gone from constant rain to blazing hot sunshine to cool and cloudy, and now it’s cool and showery. Obviously the constant rain inhibited progress quite a lot. Less obviously, the cool and cloudy weather has inhibited progress too. This is because the conditions became ideal for me to stain my garage doors, which I couldn’t do in the rain or the extreme heat. So I applied two coats of stain to the garage doors, which took a good few hours that I couldn’t spend gardening, and then we had the Diamond Jubilee, which meant lots of rain.

Today there was only a little bit of rain, and I reduced the pot count by one, by planting the kiwi ‘Oriental Delight’ that I bought from J Parkers in the place where the passionflower used to grow. It’s supposed to be self fertile so doesn’t need a male companion.

Kiwi fruit plant

If I had thought ahead a bit more, I would have stained the trellis in 2011, just after the passion flower died. I can’t stain the trellis now because newly-stained trellises are not good for plants. So I will just hope that the trellis lasts a good few more years before I have to replace it. I gave the kiwi plenty of compost and some Rootgrow. I have lots of Rootgrow left because I haven’t been able to use it on the rhododendron or the blueberries.

Number of pots = 64.