Gardening progress!

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First hello to all my (hopefully still!) gardening friends as I haven’t been on the site for months.
We had the extension built and we now have a huge heap of rubble, much of which is probably unmovable.
We told the builders we would keep the rubble for using as a base for the drive when it gets re-done and other shed type bases etc. Who knew that our idea of rubble and the builders didn’t quite gel? Rubble to me is smallish, half brick size, not a lump of concrete measuring 4ft x 3ft and 9 inches thick! Might have a use for it in the front garden, but goodness knows how I can move it.
Anyway back to the gardening, the extension still isn’t painted inside, much more interesting things to do than that.
Some of you might remember that I was clearing the area next to the cut back leylandii hedge to make into a woodland area.

This has now been done and I have lined the path with bits of the before mentioned leylandii trunks, so you can see how huge they were!
The path itself is covered with the chippings from the smaller pieces of leylandii, not going to last for long I don’t suppose, but it’s a start and cheaper than buying the huge quantity of bark chippings I would need to cover it. We are having the Electricity people in to cut down the apple trees where they encroach on the air space they like between trees and wires, so they will leave the chippings from that when they come. Goodness know when that will be as last time the trees were full of apples and you couldn’t put a foot to the ground between the apples when they had finished! Now they are in full bloom and looking a picture, so they will probably come and mutilate them soon.
Back to the woodland area. Now we have cleared the overhanging hedge, cut down the diseased crab apple (sprouting nice new healthy shoots), cut down a flowering cherry which was crammed too close to everything else and removed all the self-seed elder, it is no longer such a shaded ‘woodland’ but it will be lightly shaded when things grow again, so I am working on that assumption.
As soon as it was cleared there were aquilegias everywhere, which I have left for now and will thin out over the years. Bluebells appeared this spring and hidden in the undergrowth were a nice holly bush, in need of some pruning, loads of self-seed laburnum, two of which I have left and some struggling roses.

I have indulged myself with some plants and others have just been transferred or divided from the other parts of the garden. The one that I have been looking for has at last been found, sorry about the fuzzy photo, Chiastophyllum oppositifolium. It’s one I had decades ago and for some reason just ‘needed’ again!

Still the top bit to finish off, it has to be double dug and grovelled in as it is full of ground elder and bindweed, so have to get every little 1/4 inch piece out!

Rainy day today so there are only a few ‘people’ enjoying it. Boris and his two girls, Lily & Gracie, sneaking into the barn to steal the peacocks food!

Meanwhile I will leave you with a few photo’s of the progress on the circular lawn, the newly planted wheelbarrow, the purple leaved cow parsley which should have been staked and the bit we all hide which is waiting to be done, full of bramble, elder and the yellow flowering Lamium.

For those of you who have stuck with this blog for this long, thank you and happy gardening.

• 8 May, 2014
• 11 likes

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