Progress

Over the last week we've been making progress in the London garden when weather permitted. The steps down from the conservatory doors at least have their base constructed now, but progress upwards is now halted as the forecast is for continuous rain tomorrow.

While Mike has been mixing concrete and mortar, I have been concentrating on getting other parts of the garden dug, raked and planted... well, one other part anyway! We now have a herb border, containing a few plants we'd retained (rue, feverfew and chives), and many more bought on a trip to Ruxley Manor: lemon balm, hyssop, two different lavenders, two different oreganos, marjoram, thyme, angelica, sage, heartsease and tarragon. The bay tree and mint container haven't been placed yet. Interspersed through the other plants are some mustard seedlings which should provide some salad interest.

I'd planned to have the area under the fruit trees as a mini camomile lawn; now that I've levelled and dug over part of it I looked for plants, only to discover that I've missed the planting season so won't be able to establish that until next year.

French weather rules

We've been at our French house for a couple of weeks, and there was plenty to be done in the garden. However, unseasonal June weather has meant grabbing chances to work in between thunderstorms and downpours. That said, the frequent soaking has made the ground much softer than usual, so removing the weeds hasn't been as much of a problem as usual. Several of the raised beds, in place for a few years now, needed a top-up of soil, so I ordered a ton to be delivered on a Monday morning, having checked the weather forecast - rain wasn't expected until Tuesday night. Delivery was made just after 8 a.m. and was in fact nearer a ton and a half. We started work straight away - me moving plants out of the way while Mike shovelled barrowloads of topsoil. The forecasters, though, were out by over 24 hours, and the thunderstorms started just after lunchtime on Monday, downpours continuing throughout the rest of the day. This meant that when we re-started work on Tuesday, the soil was extremely wet and therefore much heavier to shift. Still - we made it. The soil delivered was enough to top up all the raised beds, all the fruit trees, and the bed near the bins too. It's all looking great now - the continuing rain gave the plants I moved a good start in their new homes, and the empty spaces give me a great excuse to go plant shopping on my next visit here.

More hedging and paving

The front hedge is now fully reduced in height, looking very sorry but by next year will look much better and also be manageable.

In the back garden the patio is now almost complete - just 18 more paviors to lay. The process was speeded up a lot when I realised that we had a metal cutting disc on the angle grinder - replacing it with a stone cutting disc made the job of trimming the paviors much easier!

Hedge renovation

The hedge separating our property from our neighbours' is badly overgrown. It's actually their hedge, but they do nothing about it so if the front of our house is to look decent there's nothing for it but "do-it-yourself". Renovating a hedge requires cutting it right back one side at a time. Last year I renovated our side, and this year am reducing the height. I will get it down to a height which I can manage to trim with the electric hedge trimmer. However, there is so much of it that it will take several weeks; the local council helpfully empties our garden wheelie bins weekly, but I can fill both my bin and my neighbours' very quickly with what I'm cutting out of the hedge! Here's what it looks like after two weeks of cutting - only about one third of it done so far:

Once the height has been reduced, I'll reduce the width on the neighbours' side too.

Fans started

The redcurrant plant arrived today, and I've got it planted. This is stage 1 of the fan formation... it actually looks quite pathetic with most of its shoots removed, but all being well it will establish itself.

Progress at slug's pace

Hours and hours in the garden over the last couple of days to achieve - well, not very much by the look of it. Extending the patio over where a fishpond used to be seemed like a good plan - there were brick paviors laid either side of the gap - so it just needed to be levelled and joined with more paviors - sounds so simple. Unfortunately there is just not quite enough space between the two already paved areas to make a seamless join without a lot of fiddling about - only millimeters extra needed but there is absolutely no "give" in these paving blocks, so the only way to get them to join up is to remove the pips off the ends and/or sides of the paviors with an angle grinder - one by one, until enough have been removed to get the blocks to join up. Hours of fun! and I'm not quite half-way with it yet.

The reason the header included "slug" not "snail" was that several of the bags of sand had attracted some of the biggest slugs I've ever seen in the UK - they were put out for bird food, and I think some birds have a full stomach today, as I could see slug trails ending in the middle of nowhere.


On a more positive note, the water butt is installed - just waiting for some rain now to see if it fills up! 

Also, wires have been installed on the wall between the fruit trees - I hope to train gooseberry and redcurrant plants into fans against that wall. As the redcurrant I planted in the autumn didn't survive, I have a replacement on order (Rondom again - we used to have three very productive Rondom plants so I'm keen to keep to that variety). It's not the best time of year for planting but I don't want to waste another year before getting going on the fan training.


Where the two above-ground fishponds used to be, I plan a raised bed - but before this can be constructed, the foundations for the supporting walls need to be made good. This first stage is almost complete so bricklaying should begin in the not too distant future - which will serve the dual purpose of creating the new raised bed and reducing the stacks of reclaimed bricks cluttering up the garden! That in itself would make a huge difference to the appearance - actually it will serve a third purpose too, as it will give me somewhere to put the soil being excavated from other parts to lay paving.

Off again in London

Last September I was beginning to get to grips with re-building the back garden in London, and had got as far as laying enough of the patio extension to put up the washing line, when I had a fall and broke my left hip. This put me out of gardening action almost completely for a while, and it's only now that six months have passed that I'm able to get down to garden level to do something about it. During the time I was unable to work on it, not only was no progress made but the areas I'd cleared became covered in weeds... the weed suppressant blanket broke up - it really needs to be covered to be effective. The only task I managed - with great difficulty! - was to plant a gooseberry and a redcurrant, which I'd ordered before the accident. Sadly the redcurrant doesn't seem to have survived, though the gooseberry is doing well.

The last few days have finally brought us some reasonable weather; I've removed most of the weeds, cleared a car load of rubbish, and started again with the rebuild. The plan was made last summer, so I know what I'm trying to achieve. I've planted a blackberry (Merton Thornless) and a loganberry (LY654) - the same varieties which used to give us wonderful crops, but which had to go to make room for the conservatory. These are planted on the south side of the garden, and will be trained over arches. I've also put a blackcurrant on the same side, and planted a blueberry in a container (as it needs acid soil).

Today's success was to make a soak-away for the down-pipe from the conservatory roof, and re-lay the end of the path to where the tap and electric socket have been installed. I've also prepared a water butt to stand next to the down-pipe.

Here's the latest "bird's eye" view - still a building site, but a tidier one than it's been for months!

Herby update

Spring 2014 - sage plant replaced

I've finished clearing the herb wheel - replaced the tarragon and thyme with new plants, clipped the oregano, topped up all the sections with new compost... and dug out as much as I can find of the mint roots. There's one section now left to plant with something new to replace the mint. More chives and parsley will probably be added in the spring.

The sage has grown a lot since the new plant was put in less than a year ago - probably needs cutting back a bit, but that's a job for spring time.

Rejuvenating herb wheel

January 2008

May 2010

Seven years ago, I created a herb "wheel" in the French garden by screwing together six hexagonal planters, then planting them with various herbs. Over the years these have been productive, but some herbs have done much better than others. Thyme and oregano produced lovely shapes in the planter, and fennel gave some summer height to the centre. Sage was a good plant but gradually grew too woody so last year I replaced it with a new specimen. A big mistake, though, was planting mint in one of the outer sections. I should have known that wooden edges would be no barrier to the intrusive mint roots spreading under the surface. Over the years it has got into every section and even forced its way between the wooden slats and outside the planter completely. I'm now trying to rejuvenate the entire planter and spent some time today attempting to remove the mint shoots from a couple of the sections. In future I will confine mint to a ceramic planter on the steps, so that it doesn't have the opportunity to spread into unwanted areas! However, to eliminate it from the wheel means digging out each section to clear the roots, so I'll be replacing the existing plants one by one.