Weekly round-up - 7th June

This week I haven’t managed to spend much time in the garden - I was away for a couple of days for work, yesterday I was busy (also it was incredibly windy) and this morning I was really unwell. That said, I have managed to do a few bits and pieces, and I felt better enough this afternoon to get out (and the sunshine was, and still is, beautiful).

Boat/herb area:

I have tidied this up further. After lifting the paving slabs last weekend, I moved the remaining ones out of the bed this week, and dug over the soil that had been underneath them a little. 

Herb garden/fir tree areas. Look at the beautiful rhododendrons!

As you can see, it still needs a lot of work and much more digging over, but it’s a step forward. I’ve also moved some of the bulbs around the back of the bed. I think I’m going to try to put them all around the edges of the bed. The plan for the herbs is to grow them in pots, then sink the pots into the soil. I’ll use a few of the smaller spare paving slabs for some stepping stones. Of course, these plans may change completely if my husband plans his crazy golf course properly. I also did a bit of weeding in this area and pulled out more grass and the purple flowered geranium type weed that spreads a lot. Whilst doing this, I removed quite a lot of gravel from the flower bed as well. It’s the bane of my life, but I’m trying to look on the positive side - at least we can use it to put in the foundations for the next raised bed.

After Saturday’s wind, the poor sweet pea wigwam was leaning somewhat and not quite as upright as it should have been. The sweet peas were looking a little sorry for themselves, and needed a bit of rescuing. I tried to work out how on earth I could untwist the bamboo canes from the position they’d ended up in, but it was completely futile - I’ve no idea how they got into such a contorted way. This afternoon I cut away all of the twine holding up the sweet peas, and just pulled all of the canes out and started the wigwam again. I pushed them deeper into the ground this time, in the hope of them being more stable, and have placed them slightly closer to the plants - they were slightly far away before. I’ve retied the plants to the canes, and added some additional sticks for extra support. Hopefully they’ll now weather any further crazy winds.

Newly re-erected wigwam.

Sweet pea tied to the cane - fingers crossed it stays supported.

Fir tree area:

I did quite a bit of weeding in this area this week. When getting on with this, I started digging out the monster plant. I was wearing wellies and couldn’t get as much force on the spade as I’d have liked, so next time I’m going out with sturdy trainers on. I also removed some big stones and yet more paving slabs that were under the biggest fir tree. Luckily these were a lot smaller and more liftable than the ones in the boat area, which were huge and tested my strength somewhat. My husband chopped down some more of the tree trunks this morning, so the area is looking even clearer - you can now fully see the beautiful, flowering rhododendrons in the area just behind (you can see this in the first photo best). 

Slowly the trunks are disappearing. Next stage might be an axe. Or maybe a professional tree remover.

Back right area:

I haven’t really written about this area yet - a post about this area is coming soon. At the moment I’m doing very little with it, other than trying to keep on top of the weeds. I’m reluctant to use a weedkilling spray, as I want to be able to plant there if I feel the desire to. It’s therefore just a lot of hard work and squatting! It’s a lot better than last year though, so I at least feel like I’ve achieved something, but there’s still a lot to get out. Some of them I’m not really sure how to get out, so will need to enlist my mother-in-law’s help next time she’s visiting.

Greenhouse:

I’ve planted out the tomato plants that a friend gave me, as they were getting a bit too frustrated in the greenhouse. They were in small plastic cups, and tomatoes need a lot of nutrients so I think they were ready for a bigger area from which to get their plant food. I wasn’t really sure where to put them to have optimal sun and shelter from the wind. Our newly built raised bed would have been perfect, but it’s not ready yet - it needs to be lined then filled with soil. I eventually settled on just next to the sweet peas, as there’s a little wall that provides a little shelter (I hope it will in any case) and they will get plenty of sun. I mixed a lot of sharp sand and compost into the soil and dug it over thoroughly, then put the tomato plants in. I’ve added some canes to help support them. Fingers crossed they take okay there.

I will be overjoyed if these babies actually produce something edible.

Lovely green plastic 'cane' supporting one of the tomato plants.

Along with all of the above, I’ve done some general tidying. Yesterday I loaded all of the chopped down fir tree into the car and drove off to the local tip, where we have a garden waste area. Chopping the branches up beforehand definitely helped, as I was able to get it all in the car in one go. It was bad timing, as the car went in for its service on Friday and the garage gave it a clean and hoover, and of course once a lot of tree had been loaded in and out, there were bits of greenery and wood everywhere. Still, another hoover and it looks nice and clean again! I also chopped up some eucalyptus wood which had been lying around since last summer and put it all in the garden bin, so if nothing else, the garden looks a bit tidier now. Or at least it did until my husband attached the tree trunks with a saw this morning - I’m not complaining though!

Fir Tree Area

Behind the boat area/herb garden, we have another semi-planted area. Firstly, we have a fabulous Cordyline, which is a big impact plant. It’s quite impressive, and I love it’s foliage. I’m a big fan of foliage and often prefer it to flowers. 

Apologies for the picture of the garden wheelie bin. It's full of old bits of the cordyline though, so at least it's relevant.

Secondly, there is what I originally deemed the ‘monster plant’, because we didn’t know what it was and it looked weird. I think my mother-in-law eventually worked it out, but I honestly can’t remember what it is. The leaves are similar to elephant ears, and it has little sprays of prink flowers and knobbly green root things which grow partially above soil level. It was the knobbly roots that made me call it the monster plant. I’m trying to get it out as I don’t really like it all that much, and would rather replace it with something else. On top of that, it must have grown since it was put in as it has knocked a couple of bricks out of the wall it’s next to. Unfortunately there’s some sort of electric cable running near it so we need to be careful when digging it out.

You can see the electric cable in the photo - isn't the plant weird though?!

We also have a few random plants in this area: a rhubarb, some daffodils, some cyclamen and a foxglove - it’s the holding area really. Eventually these will probably be moved, but for now they are quite happy there. We’re in the very early stages of planning what will be done where, so for the moment a holding bed is quite useful. 

Finally, we had three different fir trees. One was pretty small, one was medium height but with thick branches, and the other one was so tall and dense that it overshadowed the garden. We decided pretty early on that we would need to get these out. I’d prefer to have more trees in the world, not fewer, but they were in completely the wrong place. 

You can only really see them in the background in this picture, but the mass expanse of dark green is quite visible.

For Christmas we were given some loppers, so this spring, we set to work. We were careful to only do a little at a time at first. This was partly to make sure we didn’t disturb any birds that might have been nesting (although we were pretty sure there weren’t any in these trees) and partly so we could see the difference gradually, rather than making a fast, drastic change. The idea behind this was was to allow us to work out what we might want to do with the area. 

We took on the smallest tree first. It wasn’t too much trouble to take off the branches and just leave a narrow trunk. There was an immediate difference in the amount of light coming through, so we carried on chopping.

You can see the little stump on the left. Obviously this was taken at a different time of day to the picture above, but you can see where there is light all around in the left-hand side of the picture. 

Next up was the medium height tree. I managed to get a fair amount of this down, however most of the lower branches were too thick to take off with the loppers and required a saw. Luckily, ever since my husband and I moved in together about five years ago, my in-laws have been buying us tools and equipment as birthday and Christmas presents. We now own a selection of saws, so my husband has been working on tree number two, and there are now only a few lower branches left to remove. 

The largest tree was actually less difficult than the middle one. Most of the branches were lopper-friendly, and after a garden session where I may have gone a little overboard and forgotten the ‘a little bit at a time’ plan, half of the tree was down. I ended up driving to the tip twice in one day to put the branches in the garden waste section, as our garden bin was already full. Since then my other half has removed the rest of the branches, as well as half of the trunk, so a lot of progress has been made. 

Sorry for the appalling photography - I took the photo at totally the wrong time of day. You can see how the mass of dark green has mostly gone though. And you can see my pretty purple rhododendron. No-one would have known it was there! I suppose we'll have to paint that odd fence panel now though.

And voila, tree stumps.

I spent a while cutting the tree waste up, so that we can take it to the garden waste section of the local tip sometime this week. It looks a lot neater than it did when my husband was in charge (by his own account he’s good at making a mess!).

The pile of garden waste as left by my husband.

The pile of garden waste after I sorted it. Not that I'm obsessed with making things tidy or anything.

There is so much more light coming through now that the trees are almost gone. It makes the garden look bigger as well, but for me the light is the best thing. The boat area/herb garden had some areas towards the back right that were completely boggy, and which never got any light. Now the soil has started to dry out, and it looks like I will be able to plant in it. 

We still need to take down the trunks, and in all honesty we might need to get someone in to do that for us. The fun bit can now begin though - we get to plan what we want to put in the area. It sounds like I’ll be planning the planting around the crazy golf course, as when I arrived home from work one day last week my husband started to tell me, in all seriousness, where he thought the obstacles, fairways and holes would go. When I thought about it, I figured it does sound quite fun, and will give me some structure to plan the garden around as well. The ‘fir tree area’ will need some height, either from plants or from something ornamental, however it’s become clear that we really need to make sure that the planting doesn’t prevent the light from coming through. 

One thing’s for sure: it’s going to take some time. Better get cracking...