Doghouse's Garden

Hi!

Here's some of my projects. Most built more than twenty years ago while I was working full-time. I'd suggest none of my projects are beyond the ability of the average DIY enthusiast, with just a few basic power tools.

I no longer post on this message board, but I've left this topic as it may be of help or interest to those wishing to start similar projects in their gardens.

I've a garden with a few Japanese influences.




This is how our garden looked before I "really got at it" as they say, "everyone has to start somewhere" don't they?

When we bought this house in 1972 the back half was a veg plot and there was a cedar greenhouse in the right-hand corner. Before this photo was taken I'd binned the greenhouse and grassed over the back area as we had three kids aged four, seven and twelve and there wasn't a lot of room for the youngest to play. There was no point in being too protective of the garden while the kids were young, as various games were played on the grass. When you've kids "that's what gardens are for."

I put the terrazzo patio in around 1978. The major changes came when the youngest was seventeen and the other two had "flown the nest."
You can just about see our daughter's "rabbit shed" on the back of the garage.
She left home at 18 to train as a nurse at Great Ormond Street and we still had one of her surviving rabbits in there for another eight years.

The major work was carried out between 1985 and 1987, "I've done precious little since."





The first major project was this small pool on the patio It was a plastic pre-formed pool set into a brick quadrant. The pool is finished in the same crazy terrazzo l laid for the patio. It had a waterfall made from small bits of terrazzo.
You can just see the overflow pipe which led to the drain at the corner of the house. I think it's essential to build in this facility into any pool as it lets you trickle change the water if necessary, slowly over-night is best, without resorting to using a bucket.

Yes, it does look a bit naff now. But I was quite pleased with it at the time and the steps I made up to the patio doors.
They're a story in themselves. The house originally had French windows, then when we had the lounge extended my wife wanted patio doors.
Guess what we've got now? Yes! French windows! You can see the side bits of the window canopy I made over the French windows, as the lounge gets very hot in summer as it's south facing.



I replaced this little pond with an eighteen inch deep goldfish pond finished in York stone. I removed the terrazzo and recovered the patio in the same material. I had a five inch thick concrete raft poured before I laid the terrazzo so changing it wasn't a problem. The trellis in the back right corner hides the spoil from the pond. I later barrowed it into one of the skips when I changed the pond to a koi pool.


1985




You can just about see this "Willow Pattern Screen" I made at the bottom of the garden. It was quite complicated to make as each section is at an angle to the next to create a "curve." It had to go when I had a post and panel fence put in across the back of the garden to make that border deeper.



I changed the pond a year later to this 5ft deep 3000 gallon koi pool. It's about 25 years old now I dug it out myself and lost 7lb in weight doing it. The construction of this is covered in another topic "Our Pond" in the "Water Gardening" section. It took me two weeks.

1987




The water returns from the filters in a room in the back of the garage via four pipes under the imitation bridge. There's a "skimmer" to the right of it. It's connected to the drain. I've also another overflow in the pump sump, so it'll never over-fill.

There's been further small changes since then. The pergola has been replaced by a more substantial one. The 3" X 2" top part was struggling to take the weight of the wisteria, so I replaced the lot using 4" X 4" for the support posts and bearers and 4" X 2" for the cross pieces. I had to design and make wooden brackets to support the 16' back rail and accommodate the garage roof gutter.
It's now "rock solid."
It was a bit of the pain supporting the wisteria on props whilst I assembled the new pergola. The garden wire I use to attach the fairy lights looks a bit of a mess but it's easy to take them down if I need to. I also have to be careful pruning with my long pruners, I've already accidently snipped through the wires of the previous set of lights!

2007




The combination of the "oversize" filter (about 180 gall plus capacity) and the UV sterilizer keeps the water clear even in the hottest weather, you can see the bottom in this photo. The ceanothus gives the fish some shade, as they can suffer from sunburn.





I decided I wanted some stone lanterns (that lit up) to enhance the look of the garden. Visits to garden centres were disappointing as those I saw (in the 80's) were both expensive and naff looking. I wanted something "authentic" but there was nothing available. So I made my own. The first was a copy of this one I'd seen in a book of photos of all aspects of Japanese culture. A friend gave me the book, it came with his new Nissan car!




This one has a base, the square bit sits on top, the platform and the lamp windows are cemented together. The top with a recess for the light fitting just sits on the rest.
I can lift it off (just!) if I ever need to change the bulb.

It'd get "swallowed" by that creeping vine, which encroaches from next door's "wilderness" if I didn't occasionally hack it back!

Edit Sept 2010

I'm in the process of re-vamping this part of the garden, "more later," but while I think of it, if you buy a garden ornament from a garden centre, some do tend to scream "new" at you, until they acquire a bit of algae or moss. A way to accelerate the process I was told, is to paint them with natural yoghurt. I've never tried it but I do believe it works!




This is the method of construction. Just bits of wood, a plastic box and tub. I set it out on a big piece of Contiplas smeared with a film of grease, so the underside didn't stick. There's a steel tube in the middle of the base on which the bit next to it (which here is upside down) sits.




I got a bit more adventurous with this one. It was my own design. It has a square base and a cylinder set in it, a metal tube up the centre carries the electric cable. The construction is fine concrete mix with a layer of mortar with added yellow cement dye applied over it. It's possible to "sculpt" the corners before it goes off. Again I can lift off the top if the bulb ever wants changing.
They are lit by the re-cycled 12v pool lights from the first pond, operated from one of the four switches in the lounge which control all the lights in the garden, the transformer is in the tea-house and the cable to the lamps runs round the perimeter fence base panels.





This is my 6' pagoda. My final garden ornament project. Based on a photograph of the three storey pagoda, in Narita, Japan. Again, all concrete with a mortar coating, apart from the hard wood balcony rails made from different moldings. It's pretty authentic, down to the "pin joints" under the eaves of each roof which you can't see. To get an idea of the size, that's a full-size paving slab it's sitting on.
This time I used polystyrene foam strips glued to the Contiplas to make all the detail. It's made in seventeen sections.








This is our "Victorian style Japanese tea house.

2009




It's over 20 years old now, built in 1987. You can just see the vents below the skylight cover which I raise to let hot air out in the summer. It can get very warm in there so I leave a door open on warm days.

It used to house a 30 year-old fridge-freezer (for beers, wine and choc-ices), there's a TV (for golf and tennis) and two jukeboxes.

A 1977 Rock-Ola 468

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i42Wuc_Pzoc




The fridge/freezer had to go when the second juke "followed me home" so I replaced it with a small S/H "Budweiser" fridge, I found on e-bay.


My wife wouldn't let either of them join my leccy piano and two saxophones in the front room!

 

Hi Doghouse, I just love the style of your garden especially the teahouse with the wisteria creeping along the top. The acer is lovely too.

You'll have to post in the "how did you get your nickname?" thread :hehe:

 

Your Tea house is Amazing Dog, I want one AND the jukebox inside. your Pond, Pegoda, and Lamps are Brilliant and your Planting, Phew..can you please post more pics as i want to see more of your garden

 

Thanks for your kind words.

This is how the garden looked two years ago.

Those camellias were getting too big and cut off the view to half the garden from the house. The tall prunus tree next to the tea-house died a couple of years ago for no reason I could fathom. We cut it down but left a 7' stump and there's a new wisteria I'm training to cascade down it. Also the three ceanothus round the pool were getting too big and made it hard for me to put the net over the pool in the autumn to stop all the wisteria leaves falling in it, so I pruned them right back and removed two.




This shows better how dominant the camellias were becoming, even taller than they are here and the lawn was being nearly "cut in half" as the border round them kept creeping. All those dead blooms were a pain to collect each year.

These things "creep up on you" and it's necessary to occasionally take a step back and re-assess the situation.



So we dug them up, but saved one, cut it down and replanted it elsewhere.
The camelia we saved is a bit unusual it has narrow and slightly curly leaves.
It's doing really well after a year from little more than a stump. It may flower next year.







That's an almond tree now in the little circular bed in the middle distance, where the three huge camellias were.
I laid a small circle of brick pavers and re-turfed the area between it and the grass, these changes opened up the garden which was more to our liking.

There's three white dwarf rhodos now in the bed too, I'm layering them to completely surround the trunk of the tree.



The little red acer in front of the tea house replaced a bigger one which inexplicably died. I've trained it over the last two years to get the "dome" shape, using a circle of bamboo canes and wire. It was just under forty quid from B&Q and I chose one that would lend itself to training. I don't need the hose and sprinkler any more since installing my "pop ups" earlier this year, it's rained since.



These are the grasses in front of a stand of bamboo against the back fence. That's the wisteria on the extreme right we're training up to "cascade" down the stump of the big tree that died and we cut down..



These are two new orange and lemon trees on the patio. The wire mesh on top of all our patio pots is to stop the squirrels my wife feeds, from digging holes and kicking out the compost to bury their peanuts. We've reached a compromise, they now lay their peanuts on the top.




Dwarf azeleas on one side of our patio. You can see the little drainage holes I drilled along the wall. The patio drains very quickly after rain despite there being "no run off" other than these. We never get puddles.



These are the azeleas and the big red acer in the summer. The rain a few minutes before, has made the acer droop more than usual, though I've since given it its annual trim round its skirt. I've also surrounded it with six inch block pavers. It takes a few years of pruning to achieve that "dome" shape. You can just see our little "frog pond." Some frogs over-winter in the pond sump and in the corner folds of the koi pool liner. The surface of this small pond with a huge lily, gets covered in frog spawn in the spring. I don't mind the frogs (they say only two survive on average, from a spawning) they keep the slugs down as do the two hedgehogs that visit our garden. The hedgehogs can get under the door in the 8' fence between the garage and the house. We think the hedgehogs hibernate under the tea-house as there's six inches of clearance below the floor, but no "skirt" at the back so they can get under it. The rest of the garden has a 6' plus fence round it.




This is the white wisteria we had on the pergola I built over the French windows, replacing the sun blind I made. This beautiful wisteria inexplicably died two years ago after about eighteen years. I've no idea why, I don't think it could have been short of water.
So it's not always a success, we've had our fair shares of losses. A new one we bought two years ago has replaced it and now meets some strands from the one on the side of the garage, in the middle of the pergola. Give it a couple of years and they will be providing the shade the original did.





This is the wisteria between the tea-house and the shed on the back of our garage, the photo was taken before the blooms appeared. We've trained it to cover the whole of that side of the garden and then round the eaves of the tea house. It needed constant pruning to remove unwanted side-shoots so that it rapidly spread out. All the shrubs on the fences are supported by horizontal wires stretched between hooks secured in the concrete posts at different heights. I don't attach anything to the panels with hooks or nails etc. and I've got my neighbour that side to do the same after I installed the post and panel fence five years ago...on my own...at the age of sixty-five! This means if a panel needs replacing, it isn't such a pain to change it.

We've wild bluebells "everywhere" they've multiplied over the years. The previous owners of the house must have planted a few. We like them.



This is now a forty year old wisteria which was on the side of the garage when we bought the house 30 years ago. It hadn't reached the eaves of the garage when I built the pool and the pergola, but I could see that I could train it to grow over a pergola. This is twenty year-old photo but I like it, showing the original pergola which I changed, as eventually it wasn't substantial enough to take the weight of the over-growing wisteria.



This is our small front garden, the azelea started off as a 50p "reduced to clear" demic on Altrincham market. My wife bought it and put some Sellotape round the split stem. Over the years I've layered it several times. There's two rhodos in there somewhere. The acer tree started off in front of the tea house. We often do a bit of "musical chair" type gardening.





This is the acer in full leaf. I prune it so that it's almost "lollipop shaped."




These gardens don't take a lot of maintenance, I took early early retirement ten years ago and now my available time is limited by my other hobbies, saxophones, "leccy" piano, jukeboxes and I usually play golf three times a week.

We don't bother with annuals, bedding plants, hanging baskets etc. too time consuming.

 

What great gardens you have, and low maintenance too :thumb: The Wisteria is amazing, it looks Fantastic along the fence and trailing along the Tea house, and what a good idea using wire for the Squirrels..Thanks for posting the pics.. Dee...

 

Lovely garden, well done.

 

Looks fabulous, and an inspiration to folk just starting out and daunted by gardening not being instant-gratification (well, I suppose if you are super-rich you can just buy an off-the-peg garden from the Chelsea Flower Show!)

 

As one or two people have shown some interest in my “Tea-house” (or “tea shed” as we call it, we ain’t pretentious) I thought they might like to know a little bit about its history.
We had an extension to our lounge built in the late seventies, so then adding a conservatory would have made that room very dark. I wanted somewhere to sit where we could get away from the sun as our garden has no shade being south-facing. I decided to build something complementary to my koi pool. (I’ll post more details of that under another topic). Researching in Manchester Central Library, I came across some old books showing Victorian garden architecture which included several photos of Oriental inspired garden buildings. From them I formulated my own design, restricted by the size of the site and materials available. The overall dimensions are;

Roof 12’ X 12’
Room 9’ X 6’
Veranda 9’ X 3’

The materials were mainly rough-sawn softwood (cheapest way to buy it).
Roofing plywood for the walls and roof.
Hardwood “tiles” over roofing ply for the floor.
“Victorian” skirting boards to clad the base.

The base is constructed of 3” X 2” timber which I treated with Cuprinol.
It sits on bricks on top of paving slabs; there are pieces of butyl pond liner between the wood and the bricks to reduce the possibility of rot. There’s six inches of clearance between the base and the ground to facilitate air circulation. It was a bit “over-engineered” which was fortunate as I’d no idea it would have to support two 300lb jukeboxes as well as visitors twenty years later.

1987



The floor is roofing ply. (working late here!)




The frame is again 3” X 2” with 4” X 4” corner posts. I chose the wood myself from the timber yard, to avoid the “banana option.” I planed it down and sanded it with an electric plane and a belt sander, this didn't take that long with these tools.



The side panels are again roofing ply, glued and nailed from the inside. A bit tricky getting these "square" on your own.



The rafters are 2” X 2” connected to the “box frame” that sit on the perlins in the middle of the structure. The soffits are screwed to their ends but at the corners these turn up and join above the end of the perlins to form the distinctive shape.










The turned-up corners of the soffits weren’t difficult to make, I cut down the four 12’ X 8” planks to 12’ X 3” to get the bends with a circular saw. The configuration of the roof with the turned up corners has the effect that strong winds, instead of possibly lifting the roof up, actually pushes it down.




The roof is made of roofing ply nailed/screwed to the perlins and the soffits

.



The plywood chrysanthemum panels in the front rail, (I sort of copied these from the Victorian photos in the library) I cut out with a jigsaw.
All screwed joints are counter-sunk to a depth of about an inch and one and a half inch rounded-end dowl pegs were hammered in after the screws to get the "authentic look."

The acer in front of the steps is the one now in the front garden. We moved it as it was in the way.




The Chrysanthemum detail in the veranda panels is repeated in the support panel below each perlin above, but few people notice. Several more coats of Woodsheen covered a multitude of sins.



The doors are made from ready-planed 2” X 1”
I got the wood yard to saw a shallow cut groove for the windows which are three sheets of opaque white plastic per door, with hardwood strips stuck on giving the effect of nine-panel doors. The two side windows are each one sheet of plastic with more hardwood strips applied the same way.


The ceiling is panelled in with off-cuts of roofing ply; the sides of the void below the skylight are panelled. I covered in the skylight later as it got too hot inside during the summer.




The building I painted with "Dulux Mahogany Woodsheen." This is brilliant stuff as it forms a plasticized film over every surface. I give it another coat every three years. In twenty years, all I’ve had to replace is the “skirts” as they’d started to rot a bit and I put an extra layer of roofing felt on it about fifteen years ago. I'll replace that later this year.
The two end doors fold back inwards and the central door is secured with bolts top and bottom so can be removed, allowing the whole building to be opened up.
It has its own separate electrical supply from the garage fuse box, as does my “pond filter room” at one end of the garage and the shed behind it. The whole lot is protected by an “industrial” type RCCB.

Oh by the way, I’ve no “trades” .I was a “grocer”…well.. superstore general manager. But there wasn't much I wouldn’t tackle. I did all my projects on my own as my wife has had MS for over 20 years, but she did make me gallons of tea and enjoys the garden.

The garden has had quite a few changes over the years, the most significant being the addition of a 6’ plus substantial post and panel fence around the whole perimeter, half of which I errected myself.


The small fridge replaced the fridge/freezer. when I bought the second jukebox.

This is it a Rock-Ola 100 selection 443. As you can see in excellent condition.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prlFR6PnE74



2010




To enjoy our garden in the evening, I fitted a few lights in it. Well... 5 porch lights..two spotlights over the pool, the two lanterns with 12 volt bulbs in them. Small 15watt strip fluorescents above and behind the tea-house doors (it has its own independent lighting and power supply) and two sets of fairy lights one set on the pergola, the other round the eaves of the tea-house.
They are controlled by a bank of four switches behind the curtains on the lounge wall next to the french windows, but they don't get used that often.

 

What a lovely neat garden you have there DR

 

Thanks for that.

Funny thing is, that there's no track in either jukebox that I haven't got on a CD or an mp3 or a Youtube clip on my computer.
I'm mostly into fifties and sixties modern jazz, but it "ain't jukebox music."
One's all Motown and late fifties/early sixties US pop classics, (no whiney voiced Diana Ross rubbish, there were far better girl groups). The other has 70/80s pop, Doo-Wop, jazz vocal standards and a few "Big Band" recordings.
Both jukes have led sheltered lives, in the private ownership of two different people, for over twenty years and neither have been abused, though they are built to play continuously twelve hours a day seven days a week.
The gripper arm mechanisms are like a car gearbox. There's more information on the write-up I posted on the clips on my YouTube site. (There's some of my rubbish keyboard and sax playing on there too).

The records that came with them were pretty average, mostly Brit pop of the sixties.
I've replaced nearly all of them, I got quite a few from here.

http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/complete-music-service__W0QQ_armrsZ1

When jukeboxes were rapidly changing to play CDs (spit!) there was quite a surplus of "mint" jukebox vinyl "re-issues" that a few bright people bought up and have been selling ever since. Some jukeboxes like my 468 need to have the record centres out. Some have a mechanism which will accept either.
The 443 will only play records with the centres in. It's easy to take the centres out of older records as they are only attached at three points, but eventually they stopped making that way and the centres became solid so you need a "dinker" to remove them. I've some inserts that will fit any records I buy from America for the 443.
Half the fun is hearing the needle drop on the record and track in and you don't mind the odd scratch here and there.
It isn't an obsession, it's "another box ticked." I just play them if I'm doing a bit of gardening. But I make sure they get played a few times every week, it keeps the mechanisms from stiffening up. Using them is considered the best form of maintenance. Despite their 200watt amplifiers, two eight inch speakers and two twelve inch speakers, I don't play them loud enough to annoy the neighbours. One's on "Freeplay" but strangely, I get quite a bit of satisfaction opening the coinbox of the other with the key and "taking out the old 10ps.... I put in!"
I also get a lot of pleasure from watching the faces of visitors to whom I show them, if they don't know what they are about to see. Of course many young people under twenty have never seen a "45" let alone a jukebox. Or as I describe them, a 315lb ipod.

You can't beat a bit of nostalgia can you?

As for music, I think the "death of vinyl" in the early nineties meant pretty much the end of good popular music.

 

Such a lovely themed garden, Doghouse. It's fantastic...

 

I have really enjoyed reading this photo history of the garden. Many thanks for posting.

 

Your garden is just super Doghouse. A man of many talents and much industry.

Isn't it funny how some people have time to do everything and others have time to do nothing.