A tiny landmark weekend

As soon as we moved into the new house and had a proper chance to look around the garden, it was obvious very few if any of the plants would make it into the future plans. Most would have to be dug up as part of the build and many more would simply be trashed by the builders. This turned out to be true, and then this weekend we dug out the last two remaining large shrubs.  There are now no plants remaining from the original garden.

Before going any further, I should add that the nicer ones were saved: given to neighbours or anyone else that wanted them. Just because they were not to my taste does mean someone else wouldn't love them.

I was looking through photos trying to find a picture of the section that has just been cleared, this is the closest I could find.

It is so strange seeing the original garden.  That wall in the middle of the garden really was a little strange. The two bushes that were dug up this weekend are just visible on the right hand side in the middle, the very bright green ones.

The space now looks like this:

The fruit trees have been moved and planted in the front garden, so now the only plant remaining is the bamboo.

The only problem is what to plant there?  That photo looks almost due south, the green house provides some shade in the morning and the fence shade as the day progresses.  I have no idea what my non spiky style will be like, it will be a whole new adventure. The only plant I know is going to be added are a couple of scheffleras, probably one either side of the wooden posts.

Although everything is ready to go, even dug some manure into the soil, I am guessing there will be lots of research and limited planting this year with most stuff going in come spring depending on best time to plant. There are enough other jobs in the front and around the house to keep me going until then.

Trust in the plan.

Before starting the garden, we sat down and did a design, which we got friends to comment on. Thank you Mel and Darran. Since then it has been converting the paper plan into reality.

In a recent post (found here), I showed the cycad rockery. This and the main succulent rockery haven't changed much. The odd plant has been added and things have grown, some quicker than others. But it was quite easy to move these sections from design to reality.

This year the work has been in the other parts of the garden, moving through the rest of the plan.

In the side section we are trying to create more shade.  The whole garden is in full sun pretty much all day. With the exception of a little bit of shade along on the fence, the first real shade is created by the house at around 3pm. 

The tree ferns and planting along the fence will ultimately create more shade, even in their first year they have done well.  It is not quite enough for the under-planting though and I think we will end up putting a shade sail over that section at least for the first few years. It would also make a nice feature for when we have friends around.

The other end of the garden is more problematic. At some point the garage will be knocked down and replaced, but we can't afford to do it at the moment. The greenhouse will also be moving at that point. As the design revolves around these larger changes, it can result in things looking at bit strange at the moment; like the path ending at the greenhouse not at the gate.  No doubt the design will evolve as all gardens do, but I have to trust the main aspect will work.

The latest project is one of those times to trust everything will work out. I want to continue the planting from the end of the main succulent rockery.  The first bit was easy, plant the chamaerops humilis.

Next up the hammock posts. Ultimately there will be 4 railway sleepers used as posts for our hammocks.  We don't want to wait for years until the garage is moved to be able to use the hammocks. So yesterday two of the posts turned up.

The first was simple, going next to the new chamerops.

It was surprisingly quick to dig the hole and concrete it in.   Now it's there I can plant around it.

The second sleeper will ultimately be in a border where the garage currently is.  I know where it is suppose to go and what the area should ultimately look like. As most of the bed does not exist yet and can not be set out, it was a simple case of trusting the plans.

You see, looks a bit strange at the moment.

I find myself saying, it will work,  trust in the plan.  I just hope it's true.

Yet another day of digging and moving rocks

It seems to be that days in the garden involve hours of digging and sorting soil, or moving rocks. Today did not disappoint, with real progress on the main succulent rockery. The idea was to build a bank up to the top of the patio wall and continue it around along a new wall down the fence line.

The photo above shows the area ready for work.  The plan for the day was to start the bank and see if it would reach the top of the patio wall.  It started ok, but very quickly became clear that there was not going to be any where near enough material to bank all the way to the top.

I have been given strict instructions not to put anything sharp near the top of the wall, it will form a seat for the table, and it would be a shame to spike anyone sitting there.  With the lower height and saving the big agaves for the far corner it should be save.

Sadly even with the reduced height I am going to need to sort out some more ballast; we are down to the last pile of builder rubble and that is almost gone.

That lot is not even going to get me to the fence, so it is time to think of a back up plan.  In the mean time I can plant up the first bit and it will give me an idea of how much soil and gravel I am going to need.

With the first part getting there, the patio end to the garden is starting to pull together.

There is still a way to go, but hopefully I'll meet my deadline of getting the succulent beds built and planted before the end of July. I have strict rule of no planting succulents in the ground after July; it gives them time to settle before winter and they have a better survival rate.

It is good to have the yucca rostratas back again. They have not liked the move and being in pots. Given they drop their roots as soon as you suggest touching them I guess it is no surprise.

A new home for the sempervivuvms

The in-laws coming to stay, three birthday parties and a 50th wedding anniversary party all meant it was not a very productive weekend in the garden. The great thing about it's current state though, is that I can now potter around doing little jobs, or just water and weed the pots. So in between everything I got the alpine section of the rockery planted up.

I decided in the end to make it a home for some of the sempervivums I have accumulated over the last few years. It looks a bit empty at present as they have been given space to fill out, but in a year or so should look good.

I have selected some of my favourite varieties and it is good to get them out of their pots and give them a bit of space.

Sempervivum 'Engles'

Sempervivum 'Green Dragon'

Sempervivum 'Apple Blossom'

Sempervivum 'Lavender and Old Lace'

Sempervivum 'Rosie'

Sempervivum 'Virgil'

I have put some of the big boys in as well to see how they do with space

Sempervivum 'Orthello'

Sempervivum 'Packardian'

Sempervivum 'Titania'

There was also room one of the dwarf pines, it gives a bit of variety and will provide shade from the strongest of the summer sun. Apparently it only grows to 3 - 4 feet and should take a long time to get there.

No doubt I will add more rocks of smaller sizes and swap out any of the sempervivums that don't perform. There is also one more alpine to go in, my alpine nemesis scleranthus biflorus

Having failed twice in pots, I am hoping that it will be more successful in the ground.

Shapes

Today in the garden was all about shapes.

Hexagons.

The is the matting used for the path.  It has a membrane to restrict weeds and then when plastic hexagons which hold the gravel and keep it nice and firm.  Amazing even this small relatively thin sheet is rated to take vehicles including vans when used for driveways.

Filling it, you can leave the hexagons showing if you wanted.

Circles.

Whose idea was it to have a circular seating area.  The sheets click together nice and easily, and can be cut to shape.  There is a separate sheet for the man-hole cover, it's been left for now as sadly the builders are back next week to finish off and may need access.

S

The S shaped path seemed like a good idea at the time. Amazingly, the measurements worked out as expected and there was enough matting to do the entire area without having to go and buy any more.

?

So was it worth it?

Look plants!

Sadly the rockery stone didn't turn up today as planned.  Apparently the person who took the order didn't bother to write down that they were to be delivered today, although strangely they did manage to take all the payment details and take that from my account. 

So to cheer myself up and so the day wasn't a total waste, I started to put plants out on the rockery.  I find it easier when building a rockery like this, to set the plants out before the gravel and stone gets added. That way I can place the stone around the pots, and plant it up as I go. It is much easier than having to try to dig holes in gravel.

I'm sorry about the photo, the light was all wrong, but it was so exciting to be placing plants.

The cycad has to go in the middle and that will change the feel a lot, but it isn't quite right yet.  I may move the variegated yucca to where the agave bracteosa is at the back, then move the aloe striatula to where the yucca was, and then agave bracteosa to where the aloe was. No doubt there will be a few games of musical chairs until it is actually planted.  There are some echeverias ear marked for there as well, it will depend a bit on space. Currently I am thinking to keep this as a very neat bed, and not a more lush look, but a stream of blue echeverias running through it could look good.

The big advantage to these types of rockeries is that large bits of concrete and stone should work as a heat sink and provide a bit of extra winter protection.  I know by the time the cold arrives the heat will have gone, but even so plants against big rocks still do better.

I also decided the vertical posts were too harsh without plants, so until the bamboo and tree ferns arrive, they make ideal vertical panters.

It is great to have plants out in the garden and not just in pot storage areas.

Still not looking good, but getting better.

We had a lovely weekend away with family, which gave a break from the work in the garden.  Before we left the seating circle was set out properly.

It was nice a nice change to be working with bricks for a change, a lot of work in the garden at the moment seems to be around fixing bits of wood, if it's not fences, it's battens. Then today it was back to wood, although a little more interesting as it was time to fit the vertical slats as a slight divide to the side garden.

It took a while to work out heights and exact locations to give them a nice curve.  The paths had to be laid out to get everything in the correct places, currently the bricks are just placed on the surface, at some point I'll have to properly set the levels. 

The slats don't obstruct the view from the seating area, and really need the plants around them get the full effect. It will be a while until we really know if they work, but we like them so far.

Then it was time to start building up the first raised rockery.  There is around 3 tonnes of rock turning up on Wednesday to make it look pretty, but to save money rubble from the works has been stock-piled ready to build the levels up. The big cycad, visible in the large pot at the bottom of the garden, will be planted next to the slats. It needs more soil, so a well has been built out of bricks to keep the area clear.  This way it can simply be planted into it, instead of of having to struggle to make space.

The whole pile will be covered in a layer of gravel and soil, with the rockery stone used to form pockets to plant into and to hold the gravel in place.  Hopefully you will never know this lot's buried underneath once it is all finished. The I get to plant it.

The main garden side will be succulents planted around the cycad.  I think it will be a good spot for a some echeverias and a few small agaves.  The other side, will be mainly alpines, I am undecided if it is going to be strictly alpines, or an alpine style planting. 

It finally feels like the garden is getting close to having some plants in the ground. Although there is the certain matter of 3 tonnes of rock, and a tonne of gravel to sort first.

Now I remember why I love succulents

Today I am fondly remembering the days when my gardening consisted of  pulling up the odd weed, and removing dead leaves.  Planting was easy in the gravel and most importantly there was NO DIGGING!

You may have guessed that the digging and levelling at the side of the patio has progressed with mixed fortunes, surely it shouldn't take that long to double dig such a small area, should it? I'm not sure what hurt more the repetitive lifting or the judder every time the fork hit a bit of concrete (of which there was lots). I obviously jinxed it mentioning yesterday that it was not too bad. I should probably have had a day off from digging. However most of it has now been dug, except along the edge of the patio where it is too tough to get a fork through.

The garden end is softer, so after a rest I will try again from this end and see how far I get. It would be nice to have the whole lot dug, but if we can't the plans should be ok with minimal soil on that side.

I was too sore to try this evening, so instead spent a bit of time playing with the layout for the paths and flower beds.  Those bricks from the old patio came in handy.

The first go wasn't quite right, so some fine tuning.

A couple of changes and a bigger curve to the path seemed to work better, it should make the end more private. The aim is to have a little shady seating area with a cafe style table and two chairs. The flower beds on the left will be filled with bamboo and tree ferns to make it nice and green.  The area on the right will be more spikey, with a raised rockery to home the large cycad among other things.

Hopefully when sitting there we won't be overlooked from the houses in the cul-de-sac. Currently the greenhouse hides them a bit (although this will be moved at some point), but it will look much nicer when there is a lush green screen instead.

Apart from giving somewhere more shady to sit, it will bring a bit of variation in planting to the garden. To tie everything together there will be a lot of rock with almost the whole garden being a rockery of some form or another.  This will give me a chance to try a little moss garden, that is if I can keep it damp, watering not being my strong point.

Then it was on to test a run of vertical posts that will continue through the garden (somehow). I saw this somewhere and it looked great to provide different views as you move through the garden. We set up a few to see what they would look like. The actual ones will be taller and will vary in height but have to decide what size and type of board to use. I like the effect though.

It's a little strange to be doing all this for non-spikey plants. Don't worry though, this is just to get me started, I will move around onto the succulent bank once my thoughts have developed a bit on that area. There may be a post on that one soon, to help with the decision on which way to go with the design.

Now all I need if for the weather to hold so the work can continue.

The final weekend of pre-preparation

It was a lovely weekend, which made a great change after the cold wet week.  I would have liked to spend the entire time outside, but the weather and the builders being gone meant lots of people wanted to come over to see the house. So instead it was a case of fitting work in between visitors.

One of the jobs for the weekend was staining the fence.  Stain doesn't go very far and it ran out half way through Saturday, so it was time to see exactly what the builders had left under the top bit of soil.  I didn't want to start digging up the main garden area, and thought a good place to start was along the fence towards the house.  The plan is still to make this a little enclosed shade garden, so it needs to be dug over, levelled and then paved (or something).

The first bit was fine, the ground was compact but nothing too bad.  With people turning up for the evening it was time to call it a night. Sunday started with finishing staining the fence and then back to the digging. Sadly the bit by the house proved more typical of builders as we came across a brick, in fact quite a few bricks.

It turns out that instead of digging up the brick patio (which we think had a coal bunker on at some point), they just shovelled soil over it. To be fair it may have been buried before they started, but with diggers on site it to turn the soil over before they left, I'm not sure how you miss a brick patio!

On the bright side those bricks will come in very handy and it wasn't too much work to dig them out. Then they also protected the soil below, so there is no concrete mixed in. One aim for today was to set a final level for that part to the garden (the top of the manhole cover).  The idea was to dig and level a strip along the fence to see how much it slopes from the house into the garden and how much soil needed removing.

I hoped that I wouldn't have to shift too much soil around, or dig through too much concrete. Thankfully it looks like it wont be too bad. There will be some shifting required, from house to garden end, but it will be manageable. Once it's all dug, simply raking should grade it nicely without needing more strenuous work. Not that my body feels like the last two days were easy going. It is going to take a few days to get back into the physical sides of gardening again.

The fun part is going to be avoiding the drainage pipes that run through that bit of the garden. The bricks will come in handy to mark out the pipes so I don't accidentally dig them up. Then we can get onto the real fun of working out how to plant it all up!

Let the garden fun begin

Yes the builders are gone! Well technically they have a couple of jobs in the front garden and to touch up paintwork, but the back garden it totally clear so we can actually start thinking about it being a garden again. Forget the shiny new kitchen, heating and all the other stuff, I can get to the greenhouse and water the pots.

After they left on Friday, this is what we were left with.

After the shock of actually having a garden that wasn't full of rubbish, or having builders everywhere a weekend of fencing was planned.  It was a bank holiday in the UK, so three days to get it all done, protected and maybe start loosening the soil. 

Saturday morning, it was clear that it was going to be a typical UK bank holiday with lots of rain. Between showers we only managed two panels on the neighbours side, not quite the first day we had planned.

Sunday was better and it was due to be clear, so we went for it.

Road side done, onto finishing the one with the neighbours. Legally I can build fences up to about 2.4m high, but always feel it is rude not to take the neighbours views into account. Lets face it as gardeners, light is extremely important to most of us, so can I really take all the light form someone's garden. We agreed privacy by the house would be good, but that they would prefer lower fences with trellis for the rest. 

Ideally I would have continued the high fences another panel, especially given the cherry tree (don't get me started on that one).

Sadly that was it for the garden as on Monday it rained, and rained .......

Not quite as productive as I would have liked, but to have the whole garden fenced, to be able to see the size and how it works with the new bits is a start.  My thoughts for the design are getting there and everything is looking good for a summer of gardening. Even I would struggle to make the garden look worse than it does at the moment.

Although one full day of shifting piles of fencing, hammering and garden clearing was probably not the most gentle way back into gardening after a year off.

Starting to plan

Assuming I don't jinx it, we are very close to getting the builders out of the garden. This will mean that there is the whole summer to get cracking on the design and getting the basics in.  It is scary and a bit hard to think about at the moment as the garden currently looks like this:

View current garage door (pretty much face west).

As you can see it is not just all the builders materials, but the lack of fences plus the whole area around the patio basically being concrete (the joy of builders thinking that simply burying their waste is acceptable). The front garden is not much better and has a skip and another lot of concrete and broken tiles form the roof.  The next stage (fingers and everything else crossed)  is that the builders will remove all their materials and then bring in a mini digger to remove the top layer of soil leaving me with a flat, none concrete base to start from.

View from corner of patio (pretty much due east)

The whole garden project is a two stage process, we have lost a lot of garden in the build and the garage is now taking up valuable garden area.  Not only is it 4m deep, but there is a further 4m behind it that we can not really use.  So stage two is to knock down the old garage and build a smaller wokshop / shed (with a green roof) in the bottom of the garden freeing up a further 4m of space for planting.  So any plans at this stage will have to be done with that in mind.

So in stage one of garden design, there are two main areas I am interested in.  Firstly the little section down the side, which is 3m wide and 7m deep, so big enough to use.

This part of the garden gets the morning sun and depending on the planting along the fence, it will get sun until about 1pm.  We currently have two main ideas for the area; a Mediterranean style courtyard with fruit trees trained along the walls. This would make the most of the fact that one of the walls is south facing and it really holds the heat well. The problem would be that it means we have to use low planting along the fence line, so it may feel quite exposed. The other idea is to make it a more secluded shade garden.  Planting taller screening plants along the fence and then ferns and under-planting in the rest of the area,  creating a more lush place to sit.  This will give us more privacy, but will obscure more light from the rooms.

The second area that will be worked on straight away is the succulent bank I am planning for along the front of the patio and then going down the south facing fence. To give an idea of the size, the patio is 6.5m wide (5.5m available for planting) and it is 7.5m to the garage.

My thoughts here are to build an L shape bank along the wall and fence.  This would start quite sparsely planted by the patio steps, and would end more lushly planted by the current garage door.  If I have enough material I would like to build the bank to the height of the top of the patio wall. I have no doubt that all the agaves, yuccas and cycads will be very happy there.

The next few weeks will be spent doing some sketches and surfing for inspiration.  By which time the garden should be ready for me to start work.  No doubt I'll keep you all updated as my thoughts come together. Until then, keep your fingers crossed, that the builders do actually finally move out!