The New Garden

The stony area looks pretty nice, mate. An enormous amount of work, I can see that. You just keep on going. You have already made such a great difference in what it was like when you moved in. Chapeau.

 

Take a late October walk
https://imgur.com/a/fFIfW49

 

Wow Palustris, huge progress with your landscaping! I am appreciating "the bones" of your garden!

Thanks for including us in your garden's transformation.

 

Our neighbours had a massive garden make over. I happened to go down the Drive as the workmen were bringing out the old paviors. "They look good!" says I as they began putting them in a skip. ""Do you want them?" asked the chap. "Yes please," says I.
So I got my wheelbarrow and began moving them on to our drive.


There were a lot of them. So I stacked them at the top of the Drive

I put them along the side of the Drive to give me an idea of what they would look like.

I began at the bottom of the Drive putting them so that about half the pavior was showing.
This did mean removing a lot of bits of tarmac covered gravel.

It was not easy as the Drive slopes and curves.

Looking back down the Drive. A pleasing result.

 

There were still a lot of the paviors left so I decided to use more of them to edge another one of the beds.

Looks as if it should have been fairly straight forward, but the path edge is not straight and there were bits of cement into the soil.

Looks good and did not take that long. Hopefully it will stop the mulch from spilling over on to the path.

 

Still lots of them left. Every time I thought we had used them all up, the workmen brought out more.
So I used them to edge another part of the garden where the soil spills over on to the path.


I also decided to build a raised bed with them. This was a bit of an experiment to see if it could be done without using mortar.

I riddled a lot of top soil to fill the bed'

It will have to be left to settle and for the inevitable weed seeds to germiante before planting up.

 

Not only were they removing paviors there were also a large number onive house bricks. They did not want them either so I used them to finish off the path along side the Holly hedge.

Not that hard except for where this Laurel stump was in the way. It took some cutting down to below the path level. Laurel wood is very tough.

Not easy to get it in a straight line because of tree roots

As before I used some of the tree branches as an edge under the Holly.

I extended the path along side the Compost heap area down to the Drive.
We covered the path in bark mulch.

Still lots of bits of paviors so I made a path in front of the Compost heap. Here I used some of the tarmac gravel to give us a dry area to stand on when adding to the heap.

 

We had intended edging the West window bed with round topped edgings, but the Lockdown meant that we could not buy them straight away. When we went in they had sold all the ones they had and could not get any more.
Fortunately as well as the paviors and the house bricks the neighbours were also throwing away some round topped edgings. I snaffled them too.

Still no end in sight for the paviors so another path edged.

Getting to the stage where we were looking for places to use them. This bench was waiting for pacing slabs to be put under it, but the paviors were just as good.

 

Whilst digging the bottom of the Drive side border in the hope of being able to plant it up later with shade loving plants I found a lot of reasonable size stones.

So I used them to make a sort of rock garden next to the Summer House. This should be a fairly sunny place. I did build one there before. I dismantled it first and brought up the rocks from the Drive bed.

Beginning at the top.

And moving down the slight slope.

Down to the front.

And completed.

The spare stones I spread out alongside. If need be I can remove them and use them elsewhere. Now all it needs is a top dressing of small gravel and of course some plants.

 

There were enough paviors to do some more constructing. I also still had some roofing tiles which I have used in the past to edge a path at the top of the garden. I extended that path down the Drive a little way. It was not easy as I had to chip my way through a lot of tarmac and gravel.

We decided that a raised bed at the side of the Summer House would be a nice touch. I extended the path down to where the bed was to begin and laid out the first set of paviors.

Since the bed I made at the bottom of the garden seems to be holding togethr without mortar I decided not to use it here either.

It took a bit of playing round to get the first layer reasonably level and the corner a right angle.

The first layer complete.

The next layer.

Built.

I riddled a load of top soil from the mound behind it and filled the bed. Again it will have to be left to settle and for any weeds to grow before planting up.

The bed is under the shade of an Oak tree so it will have to be filled with drought tolerant, shade loving plants.

 

And a use for the last of the paviors.

 

Got a few things in mind, but mostly now it will be planting up, in Spring, That is if we can go to the decent Nurseries round here.

 

Wow but you have been busy ! With all those leaves you should never be without compost !