As it was a nice weekend (well Saturday was a bit grotty but not too bad) my girlfriend and I decided to leave boarding the loft for another day and continue with working in the garden.
After a lot of driving about garden centre to garden centre in the morning we finally managed to get some of the bits and pieces we wanted and get out into the garden at about 2.00pm so didn't get a huge amount done on Saturday.
Then on Sunday we only had a short time in the garden before we went to my parents for a bbq and yesterday again we were out and about so only had a fairly limited time but here is what we managed to achieve.
Firstly, having used most of the soil from the two raised planters to fill in where we removed the concrete path, I ordered a bag of top soil from a local supplier. It was delivered onto the front garden during the week so I needed to wheel barrow it round to the back. I had done some of it in the evenings but it was tricky as my little boy was very keen on running around the side of the house and onto the driveway....not ideal so my girlfriend had to keep him inside while I shoveled, wheeled, shoveled and tipped about half of it.
As we had taken him to my girlfriends parents house for the day we managed to get the rest of the soil moved and into the two large planters so they were ready to use.
We also used some of the soil in a small raised bed. It's a pre-notched kit from Wickes and I know we could have made this ourselves for less money but to be honest for the saving in time and effort it was worth the extra money. We lined it and fille with soil. It was then planted up with some nice little alpines and other small plants and decorated with vvarious stones from the Jurassic Coast which we picked up when we went on holiday there a couple of years ago. This raised bed is a nice small little area of the garden where our little boy can play around with a small trowel and stuff that we have got for him...hopefully meaning he won't be quite so interested in destroying the rest of the garden...lol
Next we planted up the far planter with lots of herbs. We thought this would be lovely as we intend to build a deck at that end and we figured it would lovely have the scent of the herbs in the air when sitting in the sun down there. You may notice that the herbs could have been set a bit more evenly back to front; this was a deliberate decision as it keeps them out of the reach of a certain little boy who was very interested in pulling them out as we were planting so we had to put them out of his reach!
We also repotted a nice bay tree my parents have had in their garden for me for the last few years. It needs some tlc but with a bit of work and feeding it will be lovely
I then made a start on treating the fence panels which fromt he looks of things have never had any kind of treatment since the day they were put in! I know it's not to everyone's tastes but we've gone for a green treatment as we like the colour and feel it softens the fencing. Once there are more plants in the garden it will look great!
Got my work cut out for me though as there are a far few panels to do!
We also managed to put a few plants which had been donated by my parents into the other planter. We will obviously need to get more plants in here but it's a start!
This is how the garden was looking by Sunday. The turf we removed for the small raised bed has been laid in place at the end of the strip of earth where the path was removed. I may well lift more from the front garden to save us having to buy any more turf...we shall see.
Yesterday I got myself a sprayer to apply the fence treatment as it is a time consuming job and a bit of a pain! Even with the time taken to mask the fence posts etc it is far far quicker than applying with a brush!
I only had a short amount of time but managed to get four more panels done. Depending on the weather when I get home today I might mask up some more and spray them too.
I think the panels at the end of the garden are going to need a second coat as they get more sun than the first panels I did and they were incredibly dry, the treatment was soaking in a quick as I could spray! However I would like to give all the other panels a coat first so they all have some protection!
You can also see in the photo above that we got a couple of trough/trellis planters, these are to go along the wall of the outhouse to give us something nice to look at while sitting at the end of the garden rather than just a brick wall. One has a honeysuckle...the other I can't remember but it's another climber. They will be put in place once I've finished off the trench with the power cable in... more diggin for me then!
Still a very long way to go but every little bit makes it feel more like a garden.
, the one that was here when I moved in, was 12" thick, layer up on layer, hard work breaking it up, but I do have one of these.
