Wanted: working garden, incorporating vegetable patch, flower beds, chicken house.
Wish list:
Greenhouse
Shed
Water feature
Vegetable patch
Flower bed/ borders
Chicken run
Herb garden
Lawn for relaxing
Type of soil:
Heavy clay, stony.
Priorities:
Erect secure chicken house and run.
Remove diseased and misshapen trees.
Dig borders to allow planting of various plants brought with us in pots
Prune sickly shrubs bordering our garden.
Once Luke has started on the chicken house in order for us to get our chickens back home (a kind friend had been trying out chicken keeping on our hens before committing to purchasing some herself). We had sold our house in December 2009 but the house we wanted had fallen through so we rented a first floor flat for two months whilst house hunting. We had already seen this house and loved it although we thought the garden wasn't large enough for our needs. We had contacted the owner of the field that the garden backed onto to see if he would sell us a small amount of land but the answer was no. We still put in an offer which was rejected so we decided it wasn't to be. However, in January 2010 I had a phone call from the estate agent, asking if we were still interested in the house as the vendors had seen a property they liked and would now accept our offer. Within a month we were packed up and moving in. The real work began!
Unsure whether it really was enough garden for us we spent February deciding what needed to be taken down. It's advisable to live for a year with a garden to see what grows throughout the changing seasons but as sound as that advice is when you love gardening you don't want to spend a year looking at it. There were some obvious jobs to be tackled; we had a huge fir which was brown and sickly bordering our garden. It blocked out light and took moisture and goodness from the soil. The chickens loved scratching about underneath the tree so we kept some of the branches to line their run.
Okay, the hard work begins.
It had to come out though and as loath as we both are to remove existing plants there is no point if they are diseased or just in the wrong place. That fir, along with three sickly looking young trees which had their roots interwoven were the first things to go. Whilst it's not a job for the light hearted you are best trying to remove the root system of anything you don't want as most often it will throw up new life and your problem continues. You'll also have a mass of roots still in the ground which will impede growth from any plants you put in it's place. Best to get stuck in and dig it up if you can or find a fit young person to do it for you; in our experience it's always less problematic to remove roots than to leave them, however daunting the prospect. With Jack's grandsons helping Luke out he also dug up a huge quantity of bamboo which was growing into the lawn. It was a b*tch to remove. It must have been covering an area 8 foot by 5 foot and it's rhizomes were rapidly spreading so great clumps were dug into and removed, having first been stripped of their canes which I would use to support peas and beans later in the year. We offered the rhizomes to friends but no one wanted them without canes so we kept a few intact for friends to have. To date they are still in pots because no one can fit them in their cars! The obvious thing to do is cut them back but I think they are angling for us to take them in our trusty old estate car. Once all this was removed it opened up the garden enormously and tricked the eye into thinking te garden was bigger than it was. What it didn't do was provide any shelter or privacy but as it's not a particularly windy spot and we like our neighbours, well, it doesn't matter too much.
On the other side of the garden was a slightly smaller conifer and a five foot high holly trunk with one spindly branch coming off it and a rotted trunk of a tree which had been cut back years before. This came out very easily and we decided, whilst we didn't have many decorative pots in the garden, to be used as a vessel for some winter flowering pansies. We literally dug it up, dragged it into position, turned it upside down so it's roots were in the air and planted it up. It's not the prettiest of plant holders but it does the job. The day after I had done this I read that upturned roots are used as fern holders somewhere. It's the old gardener's philosophy of waste not want not.
No comments:
Post a Comment