The landscaping work continues, though things have slowed down a little as it becomes obvious that we need some heavier kit.
Barry the Iraq Vet has achieved wonders with the unwanted rhododendron bed. This has now been reshaped, squared off, dug out and dressed with hardcore, which has been tamped with a petrol-driven "whacking plate". The work on this part of the job took about two and a half days, and you can already see the potential improvement in the driveway. Gravel to follow.
Which brings us back to the overgrown juniper trees. This (above) is the state they were in at the start of last week - simple enough job? In fact they've been much tougher than expected - inside the greenery, these things have emerged as real monsters. Thus far, three big truckloads of wood and foliage have been taken to the Council's "green waste" site, and the junipers are now reduced to massive, twisted stumps which will require a far heavier chainsaw to cut up - I reckon we've maybe lost two days on this, not that it matters a lot at the moment. Bear in mind that these trees started life as a variety of juniper which was described as a shrub, expected to reach a height of 6 feet or so. Right.
Tomorrow, five 1-metric-tonne bags of 20mm whin chips are arriving from a builders' merchant in Kelso, in the Border country. It's clear that we aren't going to be ready to use them, but we can line up the bags on a "quiet" part of the site. Tomorrow's main tasks are going to be cutting down the stumps, digging down around them and grinding them to below ground level. After that, there is a lot of digging out of rubbish, leaf mould and a very large amount of sawdust which has accumulated during the deforestation exercise - then there should just be a big clean-up of the area and we are ready to spread the gravel.
The picture here shows the ruin of the eastern juniper, when it was
still about 5 feet tall - this is before we started work on the western
one, which is looking pretty much intact in this view.
Some beautiful stone blocks are emerging from under these trees - most of this I've never seen before, since it was last exposed to daylight some years before I moved here. I'll get a photo of this when things are tidied up. The whole area is really opened up; we have to be careful here - last time we removed a tree (reluctantly - we had to - it was dangerous) we rather took a dislike to the garden for about 10 years, so we'll have to have some positive forward plans about what happens next. I need to talk to a proper garden designer. My problem with gardens is that I know when I see something I like, but I seem to have great difficulty in visualizing what layouts will look like - especially when we get into the 3D world of shrubs and bushes.
I have to say, we've been remarkably lucky with the weather - any serious rain would slow us down a lot.
Looks like it will open things up nicely. That’s a serious amount of debris, whin chips etc to move. Gives me pause for thought when thinking about the amount of effort involved in military engineering for something like a siege in the black powder era.
ReplyDeleteGood garden design is something I am seriously impressed by. I cannot imagine having the breadth of knowledge let alone the visualisation and artistic skills needed. Imagine knowing not only what will look good, what will thrive in that particular locale, how it will change with the seasons, and how it will look over time. And what is practical from a day-to-day point of view and meets the maintenance commitment the client is prepared to make. Staggering.
Yes - it's more work than I expected, and I had thought about it for a while. Our garden was described as "low maintenance" when I bought this place - I guess it has been. We do the odd bit of tinkering, I cut the lawns and we have a gardener who comes in every second Monday morning from March to October. That's it. Maybe the state of the juniper trees is an indicator that we have been too "low maintenance" in our approach, but these low maintenance gardens seem to tick along gently for years, until you enter a phase where you spend most of your time pulling things out or cutting them down because they have become too big (or too dead).
DeleteI recall during my walking on Hadrians Wall,
constantly boggling at the amount of labour which had obviously gone into building and maintaining the thing, and thinking about how we couldn't do that now (or if we did it would be cheap and nasty).
Garden design - agreed - dark arts. Recently I've been aware of some redesigned gardens which went very wrong after a few years - short termism? Giving the customer what he thought he wanted? Entropy? Discuss.
Oh yes - it's chucking it down with rain this morning, so I'll have to consider a good place to put the gravel bags which don't obstruct the clean-up required before the gravel can go down!
I find jobs like yours are always a bigger undertaking than anticipated. You are making great progress and weather looks cooperative. For me, another coating of snow overnight.
ReplyDeleteAgreed - I did spend a lot of time scribbling and sketching and doing sums as well, but the scale creep factor is here again. There must be some law in quantum physics or something which covers this. I used to have a boss whose recipe for contingency planning in software projects was to double the time and teh budget as a starting bid.
DeleteSnow? Winter coming in, no doubt. We have a downpour this morning, which will mess up our plans for this week, I think!
Major improvements there, I don’t envy you with the final battle with the stump. Was bad enough when I had to remove 10 plum trees, eventually all by hand as a mini digger couldn’t get through the rear gates. I was digging up roots etc for years after but the stumps were a great challenge.
ReplyDeleteMy wife has the same problem as you finds it impossible to visualise gardens etc. Fortunately I’ve succeeded in having more success than failures in garden layout š¤£ Certainly worth the effort.
It's a useful skill - I admire that. I'm pretty good at interior decoration and room alterations, for some reason, but get me out of doors and I walk around bumping into things and falling down holes.
Delete"Planning"..."pla-ning"....nope not really coming to me though I'm sure I've heard of it.
ReplyDelete"Improvise", "work around", "jury rig" and "make do" those are things I'm familiar with.
But this does look like a lot of work (and money) and hopefully will be well worth it once its grown on you.
Improvisation cut in sharply when we saw the size of these tree stumps, which was a major shock. I remember when I was a young chap working in life assurance, on of the senior managers told me that he never made plans, because they would just go wrong. If he didn't have a plan, no-one could prove whether he'd met his targets.
DeleteI've never been convinced by his line of reasoning, but I think it is an established methodology.
That’s an impressive core of timber there Tony...
ReplyDeleteThe creative in me is thinking... “ I wonder what the wood grain would look like if you cut slices through it”
However the failed gardener in me is thinking... “ Hand me the explosives old chap”
As to garden design... pick your favourite battle... and recreate the terrain...
Okay you might have to field questions like... “ Why are all the flowers on one side of the garden blue... and the other red?”
The easy answer of course would be...
“ Few people really understand true design... sigh!”
Anyway... looking good...
All the best. Aly
Today the man with the big chainsaw is cutting slices through Tree #1, and it is disappointing - the wood is much harder than you would expect for a conifer, but there's hardly any noticeable rings or markings. The explosive is an entertaining idea, but this first tree is not far from the septic tank, so we'll swerve that for the moment. Is it Blenheim Palace where there are woods laid out like the troops in the battle? Impressive. Nuts, though.
Delete