A little update

We've been making fairly slow progress on the garden over the last few weeks in terms of what it looks like, as we're waiting for quotes to come back from some landscapers to cover some of the more skilled work - laying the stone and the raised planters, and rendering them.

In the meantime, Simon has been digging out the patio areas a little more to prepare them and make them nice and level(ish). Yesterday I was even able to help as I'm feeling much better.

Here's a picture of what it looks like now:

To make up for that fairly ugly photo, here's a picture of Simon driving a boat in Stratford-upon-Avon last weekend:

Our bird feeder is still very popular, in addition to the goldfinches the pair of pied-wagtails have returned, the male of which has become super territorial, and keeps attacking his reflection in our windows. Crazy bird is crazy. We also have spotted a starling in the last few days.

No video of the digging out, but here is crazy bird:

Weekend #3 - Woodhenge

The Plan for the Weekend: Setting the posts for the Pergola.

The Equipment Required: Fence posts, Postcrete, Post hole digger, spirit levels, poke oke stick.

The Workers: Simon, Peter and Sarah
The Support Team : Kate

Progress Report:This weekend we were back on gardneing duties after 2 very enjoyable celebration weekends - the wedding of Emily and Rob and my Dad's 60th birthday. Far too much booze, food and fun.

During the week I went out to the local wood merchants to source fence posts and the wood for the path edging, which was delivered on Saturday morning.

Saturday was spent getting prepared, as my Dad was heading over on the Sunday to help us. Simon took delivery of the timber and moved it into the garden and garage. We looked in to hiring a post hole digger, but as they were only £22 in Wickes (and more than that to hire for a week), we ended up buying one. Its a rather cunning but simple contraption - basically two rounded shovel blades hinged together with long handles. It makes lovely round holes just large enough to house a 4x4" post. We also heard about a product called Postcrete, which is used unsurprisingly to concrete posts in place. Internet reviews suggested that this product was somewhere between alchemy and magic, so we bought what we though would be enough bags to cover all our posting requirements. It turns out we need more, but I'm not sure the car suspension could have coped with many more bags than we bought...

On Sunday  before my Dad arrived we spent trying to get a level on the garden using the laser level, which was fun, but tricky whenever the Sun came out. Thankfully Dad turned up shortly after, and we started measuring out and then digging our first hole. I say we, I only ever did measuring and moral support while the boys did all the digging. Digging out the holes was slow going, and sometimes very slow thanks to a layer of rubble but steady, and getting the posts vertical and level on top took a fair amount of time, but the Postcrete turned out to be truly magic.

You fill your carfully measured and dug hole 1/3 full of water (we made up a special measuring stick for this), put in the post, make sure its nice and vertical and then pour in the powder. We found it best to have 2 people holding and making sure the post was vertical in both planes while one person poured the powder was best, but in theory could be a solo job. On a warm day like Sunday though we only had about 30 seconds to make sure we were level after all the concrete was in before it went so solid as to make moving it tricky. After 5 minutes the concrete was set fast. Chemistry - it's awesome.

By the time we broke for lunch (and the first half of England v France 6 Nations match) at 3pm we'd set 3 posts, and by sundown at 6:30 we'd done 5 - which is half of the posts that make up the pergola. Although the ground isn't level, we were able to check the tops were level with cunnning use of the edging planks placed on their cut side on top of the posts, which was a good measuring method, but I think got dropped on someone at least 5 times over the 2 days...

A sucessfull day, barring the disaster in the evening when the permanent marker my Dad left in his back pocket leaked all over our cream leather sofa...thank god for household insurance.

Monday, Simon was back to work, so Kate joined the working crew for the remaining 5 pergola poles. We got going abot 11:30, and by 3pm when Kate and I had to leave for an appointment, we had 3 posts in and the 2 remianing holes mostly dug. It was these last 2 holes - closest to the fence out to the parking area that were the worst. Our soil is clay, so tough to dig through to start with, but for these two the rubble layer about 20cm down was by far the worst we'd encountered. Whole bricks, chunks of concrete and tarmac for about 15cms. In the end the holes had to be widened so we could get a pickaxe in to break up and lever out the worst of it. Whilst we were out, Dad backfilled and redug the holes so that they weren't too large, and Simon made it home before dark to help him set in the posts in the concrete.

2 days, 10 posts. Not bad. We need another 7 posts to go in for the secondary fence, but these should be quicker as the positioning is not quite as vital as for the pergola - as long as they're vertical and in roughly the right place we'll be fine.

What it Looked like when we finished:

Not the greatest photos, thanks to the Sun position - I'll try and upload some better ones later. In the foreground you can also make out our birdfeeder, which is prvoing very popular with the local population of goldfinches. In the mornings, about 20 of them come to our place for breakfast. We also have a pied-wagtail pair a couple of fat pidgeons and some magpies.

Weekend #2: Day 1

The Plan for the Weekend: Draw and stake out all the key measurements for the garden, start edging paths.

The Equipment Required: Shovels, tape measures, spray paint, wood.

The Workers: Simon, Peter and Sarah
The Support Team : Jean

Progress Report Day 1:
A day with good progress, mapping out the plan onto the real garden, and digging out some of the areas more exactly where needed. Simon was acting as precision digger, while Dad and I did the measuring.

There were an interesting few moments when we realised that the garden plan doesn't match up to the shape of the garden. Two of the measurements, for how the house sits have been transposed, which lead to some interesting jigging around of the design to make it fit into the correct shape. I think we need to make a few additional adjustments tomorrow to even out the balance, but we're pretty much there.

We also took a trip out to the London Stone Company (where we have chosen the stone for the patios previously, to look at their fence, as I though that this would look really good for some of the fencing in our garden and wanted to take a closer look at it. With Dad on hand, we determined that it was essentially just made up of bits of 1x2" timber, and that it would look great through the whole garden, rather than what is currently on the plan. It will be time consuming to consruct, but I think will look great. Plus its the sort of job that can be done towards the end of the project, and gradually as time allows.

Fence Makeover Design

We've also got our shed design sorted, although we've not yet ordered it (or negotiated the price down):

We have shed!

What it looked like when we finished:

The all important time-lapse video:

Weekend #1 Day 2 Report

The Workers: Simon, Jimmy and Peter
The Support Team (on Tea, coffee, cake and bacon sarnie duty): Sarah and Jean


Progress Report Day 2:
What it looked like when we started:

There was some snow overnight...

Having fun in the snow...

 What it looked like when we finished: 

The Video: Day 2

Weekend #1: The Plan and Day 1 Report

The Plan for the Weekend: Remove a 20cm layer of topsoil from the whole garden, dig deeper footings for the shed, and foundations for the planter walls. Level the ground as much as possible.


The Equipment Required: Mini Digger, Mini Dump Truck, Skip.

The Workers: Simon, Jimmy, Peter and Kim
The Support Team (on Tea, coffee, cake and bacon sarnie duty): Sarah, Jean and Caroline


The Set Up:

We're not having any lawn in the garden, mostly paving and paths, which means digging down to create footings, as when we build back up we have to be at an appropriate level against the house's damp proof course. There was a lot of soil to move, even though it's not a big garden, so we hired in some equipment - a digger and a dumper truck and a skip to put all the soil in. We were lucky enough to have help from both our sets of parents, and our friend Jimmy to lighten the load. Unfortunately I'm not able to help very much at the moment thanks to recent surgery, so I've been part of the support team this weekend.

There was some debate about what types of digger were available, but in the end we plumped for the smallest - designed to fit through doorways, to avoid having to take a fence down. Our digger and dumper were delivered on Friday afternoon and very kindly moved into the garden for me (as Simon was at work).

The planned skip delivery (to put all our soil in) however failed. The idea was to put the skip on our front garden, but as there are manhole covers, this wasn't possible. Instead we ended up buying builders bags, which we put on the front, which will be collected by a grabber truck on Monday morning.

We've been very lucky with the plant hire, as one of Simon's colleague's brother runs a plant hire company (http://www.contractorshire.co.uk), and they've been able to provide both the equipment we needed, and a lot of good advice (as well as a man to come and fix our dumper on Saturday evening when the track came off).

Progress Report Day 1:
What it looked like when we started:

That's not grass, but a field of weeds

Up bright and early on Saturday to start the digging. Simon set up a webcam overlooking the garden, to take a photo every 10 seconds with the plan to turn it into a video of the days (and other working days') progress. The day 1 video can be watched below.

Start of work was hampered by the dumper not starting due to the cold (-2 degrees at 9am), so initial digging was slowed as we had to use a wheelbarrow to cart the soil out of the garden. After a bit of head-scratching, googling, warming up the machine with a hair dryer and finally a phone call to our man in the know, we eventually got it started by jump starting from the digger (use of digger as battery supply in a flash of genius from Jimmy). Once the dumper got going the pace of work picked up considerably until it was stopped by lunch and slowed after by a corner of the garden with extremely frozen ground. The video at this point shows a lot of work, but little progress in terms of area. Once the frozen ground was cleared, the pace picks up again, until the track came off one one side of the dumper.

This lead again to a lot of head scratching, googling (my main task of the day, other than providing food and drink), and a call to our man in the know until another man in the know was dispatched to come and fix the machine for us (hooray!).

By this point the snow had begun to come down and it was pretty much dark, so that was it for the day and everyone retired to the house for home made lasagne and some well deserved beer and wine. Everyone was tucked up in bed before 21:30.
 What it looked like when we finished: 

Before Snow and Digger-fixer Man

The Video: Day 1

The Garden Project

Over the next few months my husband and I will be constructing a garden out of a rectangle of mud and weeds. We're going to post to this blog as we go along to track our progress.

We have a garden design to work to, created by Louise Rich (www.richgardens.co.uk). and we're going to try and do as much of the work ourselves as we can - with a significant amount of help likely required from my Dad, who actually knows one end of a digger from another.

The design (apologies for poor quality photo, improved one to be uploaded later)