We’re still working on the pool…..but you can’t spend your entire life wheeling barrows of soil around the place, so for a bit of light relief, we’ve been giving the side garden some attention.

There’s nothing there really, just lawn, and an odd collection of trees and shrubs around the perimeter – mostly self sown alder, hawthorn, and hollies.   We remember noticing the hollies as tiny seedlings when we moved in; boy how they’ve grown!   The alder and hawthorn must pre-date our arrival here by a decade or two!

There’s also a little straggly thicket of what we assume is a few years worth of Christmas trees which one of the previous residents couldn’t bear to throw way, but which now do little more than demonstrate that after a couple of weeks in a centrally heated home, the best place for a christmas tree is the municipal tip.

We’ve also had a bit of a rabbit problem in the garden this year, and although the cat has sorted it for us, their burrow was cunningly concealed right under the clump of holly.  We don’t want any new bunnies moving in, so we need to remove their cover!

Sorry guys, its time to go

We plan to re-design the garden around “sharing” the view of the field beyond, and the chainsaw has had an outing.   There’s one crab (also self sown we assume) which is actually in the field next door so that will stay, but other than that, they’re all coming down!   The very large conifer in the picture is a bit beyond Nick’s felling ability (and is big and heavy enough to do serious damage were it to land in the wrong place) so we’re calling on professional help for that one, but soon expect to be enjoying a substantial bonfire, and a much changed view!

An “after” picture will follow in due course….!

Sometimes things just fall into place….we had a customer arrive on the nursery a couple of weeks ago who wanted the garden of their new build house made a bit more interesting .  And they wanted it doing NOW.

It was just lawn, everywhere, although surprisingly large – one of those “could’ve got another house on here!” gardens.  The brief was to cut decent size borders (1 – 2mts deep) around the perimeter, and plant up with easy care shrubs.  About 100 square metres of turf to strip, and about 160 (mostly specimen size) plants and trees to install.

Did you order 165 shrubs sir ?

And everything just kind of happened – we were able to juggle our diary to free up the time to do the work, we planned and organised the plants at very short notice (less than a week) the weather was extraordinarily benign, Steve and Nick worked their socks off, and the customer has a garden!   Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together!?

There are still some finishing touches outstanding – bark mulch to be laid, and some bare root trees and hedges to be installed when that season starts in a few weeks time, but the job is largely done.   Alan Titchmarsh would have been proud!

The picture shows our new Ifor Williams trailer ready for its maiden voyage,  loaded up with the first batch of plants for this job, so its earning its keep already.   And no, we wouldn’t normally transport plants on an open top trailer – but the job was very local, along very slow country lanes, so just on this occasion….