Taking shape!

I need to take pictures... but for now just describing (basically describing my joy at things taking shape)

Our garden is roughly 20m long by 8m wide, with a slight slope away from the house and also from left down to right. The right hand side is well covered by mature conifers, and the furthest away part (furthest away from the house) is wild-growing with blackberry bush, couple of trees, a wee man-made mount and a couple of small pre-formed ponds (which will become a bog-garden when we got the new bigger pond going).
We had to get rid of an old, pre-war iron shed - which yesterday someone came by who wanted the parts to build a paintball-range! We found these people on freecycling! Cool! New shed has gone up some weeks ago. Now we have 2 railway sleepers that are about 250cms(!!!!) long and about 7 which are "normal" length (about a metre). We took up the massive paving slabs from the old garden path - there were 9 of them. 60x75cms, we recycled them into a new seating area in the centre of the garden. Hard work as they were all different thickness, so the area is now not very level but looks nice and rustic! To get the slope out of that area we had to dig down, one corner as far as 50cms down, and turned that into two steps down using some sleepers (have you ever tried to carry a 250cm long railway sleeper that had been the base of a shed for 60 odd years and thus full of moisture?) It looks brilliant!

I have dug over and cleaned out (bl**dy couch grass!) about 20 square metres of flower border and this morning spent populating it with perennials, some shrubs, some bulbs and a Kilmarnock Willow which I heard helps with too much water in the soil? I have sown out my veg into pots and planters this year, hoping this will help me to keep the rabbits at bay (I don't want to lose my kohlrabi again!).
The lower half of our garden is now nicely landscaped - we still have to strip about 15 square metres of lawn and dig over a narrow flower border and dig a new bigger pond, and then spread the area that is not flowers with bark chips. We decided to go for bark chip ground cover, nice and deep for a cushiony feel.
Oh and the council have agreed to replace their fence - so we "only" have to replace the fence on one side, that's about 11 panels and a gate which will happen within the next 4 weeks (I have no idea when the council will do theirs - and yes, we will have to share the cost with them, but oh well as long as it gets done!).
Pictures coming maybe tomorrow...

 

Sounds good Wishy
Would you like some bluebells?
Digging lots out and I don't live too far away.

 

Ohhhh real Scottish ones? I have had 50 english ones sent from "abroad" (so to speak, south of the border *wink*), but I don't really like the look of them, maybe they suffered from the transport, they were sent "in the green" and I have planted them out within a couple of days but the green is still lying around rather than starting to grow! So if you have any spare ones I would love them! Want some railway sleepers in return (nicely weathered and rustic)? "wink"

 

before: "garden" as seen from the "wild corner" last summer, as you can see, the old iron shed (a major headache!), our lovely little apple tree (yielding lots of fruits!) and lots of overgrown bits and bobs.



looking in the same direction this afternoon (hubby is off and took the pic, I can't believe it is sunny now, I am in the office after spending the morning in light drizzle planting!!!!!)

(you can also see the small preformed pond, the arbour bench still waiting for a permanent position and how the upper half of the garden still needs a lot of work done - but the old shed is gone, the new shed is built and around half of the flower bed is dug!)

This is my morning's work: some bulbs and tubers which are obviously invisible also went in. Oh and you can see our wee monkey puzzle which was planted 2 years ago and will now start to grow - we can already see progress!


Piece of building site: the railway sleepers, the long one was a real pain to move, especially as we had to carry it over ground riddled with holes, if one of us had stumbled and got that thing falling on top of him or her it would have been disaster, but now we are quite pleased with the result - the long sleeper potruding into the flower bed marking the spot were it becomes much more narrow and only foliage stuff because round about there starts the part of the garden that only gets sun from the afternoon and flowering plants may have a hard time.


So the top bit is still building site - will get a pond, an arch with climbers, maybe even a wee wire frame with climbers creating a bit of a barrier between the two halves, and what is still lawn will soon be bark chips.

[ 21. April 2006, 05:36 PM: Message edited by: wishaw ]

 

Oh! That's a real labour of love you've embarked on and your right to be proud of it.

 

Looks a great project. A couple of months from now and you'll be able to sit outside in the sun and watch things grow.

 

It's incredible what you've done!! I remember your first posts about this - well done!! :D :D :D