Clueless in Italy

This is a view of our garden from the house. It's a blank canvas at the moment. It's 60 metres long and goes to a point at the end, a bit like a ship. maybe one day i will stick a flag pole on the end and fly the ensign

We've had the property for 3 years and this year is the first year that i have done something to the garden apart from mowing the weeds...erm.. i mean lawn! Our local council gave us over 120 hedges if you can call a 4inch stick with some buds, a hedge, and they gave us a number of trees, a similar height to the hedges. We planted them and we bought 5 larger trees and planted them in the weed bed....i mean lawn

There is a canal to the side of the house, so i rigged up an irrigation system with a submersible pump so we can draw water from the canal to water the garden. In the summer time it's a blessing.

I also fitted an arbour two thirds of the way down the garden and planted a couple of climbing roses alongside.

The garden soil is clay, i'm surprised anything can grow in it, it seems very dense. I've been watching loads of Youtube vids regarding improving soil and i think i will be working on the soil over the next few months I've been collecting leaves and mixing them in with the soil. Also in the foreground of the image there is a pile of soil that a friend gave us as they had some heavy renovation work done to their house and this soil was dug out of the foundation. It's not perfect but the texture is a lot better that what we have, so i'm also mixing that to our soil. Finally i didn't prepare the soil before planting the hedges and many seem to have struggled in their first year. I ended up sheet mulching around the hedges, then covered with the soil from my friend and covered in grass clippings. I don't know if it will improve the soil but it did manage to keep the soil pretty moist through the intense summer heat.

 

We have a little studio to the side of our house and this is the view from my window. There is a nature reserve not far and we see a lot of low flying Herons, ducks and other birds flying to and fro. There is a canal just on the other side of the fence covered in reeds. So we also have a lot of birds nesting there. We don't see them much but we hear them all through Spring and Summer.

 

It looks and sounds like an ideal spot John. Members will look forward to seeing your progress.