We Dug

Last weekend we finished the gravelling of the garden. Hubster dealt with the surprisingly tough job of putting in the edging next to the turf, and I hefted much of the tonne of gravel, aided by one of our neighbours. We dug a little pond and transferred in the water from the other pond, including a rather annoyed damselfly larva (who will no doubt take care of mosquito larvae come the summer).

So here are all the photos. We're getting a picnic bench to go in the centre of the gravel, as it's a lovely sun trap until about mid-late afternoon - we'll stain it blue to match the rest of the wooden things. There's going to be a breeze-block structure for our barbecue over in the back left hand corner, and Hubster is looking forward to barbecuing all manner of meat this summer. The maple to the left of the gravelled area has lots of bird feeders hanging from it, and I've counted robins, blue tits, great tits, coal tits, long-tailed tits, goldfinches and chaffinches.








The drought is going to be pretty tough on Jurassic Park this year with a hosepipe ban coming in, but we've got water butts set up, have figured out that our shower water is nearly enough to water the entire garden (and of course some plants like euphorbias and the Wollemia won't need it every day), and Thames Water have said drip micro-irrigation systems are fine as they're very water-efficient, so I'll be ordering one of them. I think there's reason to be optimistic - I just hope we're not restricted to standpipes...

We Dig

About four years ago there was a really crappy television show called "Bonekickers", all about crime-fighting archaeologists. I switched off after the following exchange:

"What do we do now?"
"We dig."

Anyway, yesterday, we dug.

Now that I am once more the only resident of Jurassic Towers with an interest in horticulture, the property manager has been quite busy getting builders in to repair the damage to the upstairs flats, and we now have new neighbours next door (after nine months alone) and above (after a year and a half). This means it's time to rethink my occupancy of the garden. After our upstairs neighbour died, and it was clear no new tenants were coming in, I spread out underneath the fire escape.


It was a rather crappy bit of the garden to be honest, and only really good for taking candid shots of Hubster through the leaves as he sat at the table. So, I wondered whether the property manager would be amenable to me gravelling over part of the lawn. The answer was "hell yes". And you'll see why:


Here's the lawn, with Hubster for scale. I'm not a big fan of lawns - I don't like big monocultures. That said, this was mostly clover and buttercups, with a bit of moss thrown in for good measure. And of course with a maple, an apple tree and a tree of heaven hell forming a triangle, this bit of lawn was never going to get the nutrients it needed. It took about four hours to dig everything up, then we broke for a shower, and a trip to the garden centre to get membrane and a massive cream tea. We laid the membrane as we were losing the light.


We pegged the membrane in places, and put plants on top in others. This morning, I started placing some of the plants. This was harder than I thought, and some of them look really bad at the moment, like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree.


Next weekend the gravel is arriving, and it'll look a whole lot better then, I hope. We're putting in a little pond, and I have plans for a larger table and chairs (maybe a picnic bench?) in the middle of the gravel.


All of it looks rather miserable, not least because it was tipping it down with rain. I was in waterproofs, but after two hours out this morning I was soaked to the skin. I'm really rather ready for spring to happen so the plants can get a bit of colour on them. It's on its way - I can tell - the Metasequoia has buds on it, and the Acacia has little flowers forming. I even saw a bumblebee yesterday morning sunning itself.

Tune in next week for the arrival of the gravel...