Gardening

This year so far has conspired against me with regards to getting the garden in order. Last year I was only really able to impose a very limited amount of order on the thing, given that it was utterly chaotic. Nevertheless, my ruthless, almost obsessive hunting down of brambles and bamboo finally produced something vaguely workable. By that time, however, the year had near enough run out.

So that left this year - a sort of blank slate (or tabula rasa if you want to be pretentious about it) for me to work on.

First task: KILL THE FRONT GARDEN.
Last year the front garden was the main thing that I had a serious attempt on. The back garden was mainly just clearance - I actually tried to do something with the front. After clearing the excess I turned all the soil over, composted, set up a border with some stone things and planted various bits and pieces including some whole plants and some seeds.

The whole plants sort of survived for the most part, though the ones purchased as 'ground cover' proved a little too effective and drove out the neighbouring heather. The flowers planted survived well and the seeds sprouted some nice poppies and so on. Unfortunately, the latent weeds in the soil I turned over went on a rampage and overran bloody everything. I had some attempts at weeding but with grasses in the mix as well I had no chance.

So this year the plan was to wipe out everything with powerful chemicals, replant and start from scratch. Unfortunately, it kept raining or being crappy weather. Most of the better plant-killers penetrate the leaves of plants and work their way to the roots, destroying the plants metabolism and killing them for good. However, this type gets broken down in soil and will only be taken up by plants carrying out active metabolism. So if it's rainy the stuff gets washed into soil and destroyed and if it's cold or grey the plants don't do very much and the stuff has no effect. This last week has been pretty much the first chance to spray with any hope of being effective. We'll have to see if it's too late to be of much use.

Second task: RIGHT-HAND-SIDE OF BACK GARDEN.
The back garden has been sort of divided into zones. The right-hand side is going to have a border lining it and be covered in broken up slate with pots and planters and so on. This means removing all the stuff that is in the way, making the soil handleable so it can be smoothed off, putting a border in and then laying down the slate.

So so. First thing - massive Buddleia bush has been there for yonks. In the day when it was surrounded by masses of overgrowth it had adopted a strategy of growing up and over and taking on the appearance of a tree. This did mean it took us a long while to identify the thing as we were looking at types of tree, but I digress. The point is that it had to die. I did like it in a way and was sorry to see it go but it just grew like mad and so would have swamped everything.

To get rid of it I initially sawed off all the main branches which left a pretty substantial stump. The stump had sort of grown sideways too before leaping up so it was even fiddlier to deal with. In the end I had to excavate down and down around it, chopping up major roots as I found them to gradually loosen it. I'd done most of them when I discovered a massive, huge taproot going directly underneath it. To get at it I needed to dig down about three feet and even then I couldn't cut into it - it was just too inaccessible and tough. After a long time of heaving and swearing I hit upon the idea of wrecking a chisel on it and was finally able to chop through it to leave a big hole:

Quite difficult to see the contrast on that so just trust me, it's a big hole. And here is my valiant, defeated foe:

Rest in peace you awkward bugger. In preparation we also bought some tree things. There is an olive tree:

which may or may not ever produce olives. Also, a rosemary and lavender:

The ultimate plan is to have lots of herbs and so on.

Once that was done I had to try to level the garden off. The big problem with this, however, is the previous owners having the bright idea of planting a stand of bamboo at the back. They presumably took their panda with them when they left because it'd grown like mad and gotten absolutely everywhere. Last year I dealt with most of it with some chopping and cutting and more swearing but could not clear it all. I hoped that the remainder may have rotted down and be easier to deal with this year - no such luck. The base of it is now quite short bamboo bits sticking out of the soil but below the soil it's a thick, knotted clump of bamboo which is damn near impossible to get through. It's already bent a garden fork. As I don't have a disc cutter or a laser I've decided it can stay there, at least partially. Its growth has formed a sort of mound so I am going to build up a sort of rockery over it to make it look as though the mound is deliberate. Hopefully then it may rot down totally.

Then there was digging down along the path to put these wooden edging things in - they are made of dead bamboo. The only good bamboo. That was hard work in itself as digging down inevitably led me to great clumps of cement that needed chiselling as well as buried house bricks. Got there in the end though.

So then it was just a case of covering the soil with slate. Firstly I laid down some weed sheeting stuff, augmented by the canvas covering off a crappy wardrobe thing. Then; slate. We bought about three bags to see how far it would go - the answer was "not very far". Then bought some more. Still not far enough. Now we have some more and I think it's going to be enough now. Bleeding hope so.

This weekend should see the completion of the right-hand-side. Then it's the madness of the left.