Project Front Garden

Now that is lucky.

 

If you've got spare bricks you could use them to create a small path in the middle parallel to the wall so that you can easily move back and forth.

 

More bricks! (Was hoping to have them all moved by this weekend, but the whole family have been ill. Today is intensive brick-moving day!).



And still more...


I have to admit I find the whole process strangely gratifying. There's something really satisfying about reclaiming old, unwanted items, to be put to a new use. Quite enjoy the physicality of being outdoors shifting them, too... (although may change my mind after a few more loads!).

 

Haha, no - I think that's someone's bus ticket!
One of the 'joys' of our 'garden' in its current state is that we collect everyone else's rubbish! Hopefully the new wall will help to prevent that problem (and people skateboarding over it, using it as an extra-wide pavement!)

 

Unfortunately not. Especially if you get a lot of kids going past on their way to and from school. The cheeky gits just throw their rubbish over the most convenient garden wall. Its the luck of the draw. If they finish their 10th bag of crisps as they pass your house, you'll get the empty bag. If they finish outside someone else's, they get the empties.

 

Me too - I find that doing physical stuff in the garden, even if it's only potting up or painting fences, concentrates my mind so that I'm not thinking about the everyday stresses of work, etc. I walk into my garden and can feel my shoulders loosen up and everything else fade into the background

 

Update!
I ended up working unexpectedly throughout the rest of April (the joys of being self-employed), so the task of collecting the bricks had to be paused. We did have some competition (unsurprisingly) for the free bricks, so lost out on some of them while I had to go away to work, but we still managed to salvage the vast majority of what was available. I'm hoping we'll have enough for Plan A wall design, but there is a Plan B and C, just in case. It's a fairly decent pile:




Next step is to clean up the bricks, count and categorize them, and break up the concrete while we do so. Then we can book the builder to complete the wall.

 

Update!
We dressed all those bricks ourselves, and finally got builders in to construct the wall itself. We built the wall across the front of our house and our neighbours' (as both had been removed). The original plan was to also build a dividing wall between the two properties, but it turned out when we dug deep enough, that there had never been a dividing wall. The footings were in place for the wall across the front, but not between our house and next door.
On that basis, we decided that we'll put a fence between us instead (it would have cost extra to put the footings in, and it seemed silly to reinstate what had never been there in the first place). So we now have a wall built across the front, which looks like it was there all along!
I personally think it was worth the effort of collecting original bricks and dressing them by hand.
Next, we need to put a fence between the houses, finish breaking up our concrete and hire a skip to get rid of it (it was much thicker than hoped, so we ran out of time to finish getting rid of it before the builders arrived).
So! Here's my 'new' (old) wall!





(The plastic is still in place on the last photo to protect from the weather).

We are going to leave it two weeks (on the builders' advice) before jet-washing the wall to bring out the colour of the original bricks, and breaking up the remainder of our ugly concrete.

Meanwhile, suggestions for plants for a small-ish front-garden that is mostly in shade (sunlight in the mornings, but it's our back-garden that gets all the lovely sunshine) would be appreciated! I'm going to plant my hollies, berberis, some roses, hebe, and a couple of others. The back-garden is all in pots, so seasonal bulbs (suitable for a shady patch) would find a good home here, and I'd like more of a traditional cottage garden feel for the front, as the back is all feature plants, and more exotic specimens.

 

That wall looks fabulous as it is, without the jetwash.

I bet your neighbours are chuffed.