Most of the work done on the garden transformation has been done manually. And before you ask, no – we haven’t hired anyone to do any of the manual work! It’s just me and the Hubs.
The only thing we did get help to tackle was the clearing of brush along most of the front of the house and widening the driveway, in that same area, so that two cars could fit side by side. We needed a digger and digger driver for that! The area (which is only part of the front garden) is approximately 20mx6m and, really, a machine needed to tackle the brush and rocky areas. There’s a lot of rock in Scotland!
The digger driver did the job really well and cleared the very front leaving it ideal for a lawn area. He also left the boulders and rubble he had unearthed in a somewhat artistic curve. He had to do something like this because the land sloped steeply at this point, as our garden is on a few different levels. I don’t mind this at all, in fact I love that the garden is on different levels. But, I’m having to accept that the vision I can see for the garden development can’t be seen by many others until nearer the stage of completion.
It can be a bit solitary having this vision for years and years and not really being able to share the excitement of it.
Last year I roped the Hubs into helping me prepare a bed for a rose hedge at the front edge of the garden, on the lower level, beginning at the curved rubble of rocks. I remember the day clearly; it was an overcast day in March. I had over-wintered the roses in temporary tubs and the leaves were starting to unfurl. And, as always happens when I leave things a bit longer than I should, everything had to get done all at once. The poor Hubs. But, the roses absolutely had to get in this particular weekend come hell or high water!
And get in they did. I was very pleased with the thought of my Floribunda roses creating a little hedge when they established themselves. The flowers last year were lovely and really cheered me up every time I went past. I liked these roses so much that I decided to put the others I had in the front corner-garden area. Roses are great structural plants and they are lovely in flower beds as well. So now, I have these particular pink Floribunda roses on both sides of my front garden. I can’t wait for them to flower this year!
Later on last year, I started to critically look at the rose hedge area. There was a lot of green I thought, and the area needed some sort of contrast. In the adjoining rockery, with steps leading to the higher lawn level of the garden, I had planted some purple leaved Ajuga two years prior. It had done really well in these Scottish conditions and had spread like the great groundcover it is. I thought it would be the perfect addition to the rose hedge area and decided to make some cuttings.
Once the cuttings had developed a good root network (I placed them in jars of water to encourage this) I potted them up and eventually popped them into the ground in front of the rose hedge. Gardening does take a lot of forethought and patience!
Those cuttings are starting to look really nice now. They’ve grown a little bit (not a carpet just yet though) and it is late spring, so their blue flowers are putting on a great show. While they’re planted in front of the rose hedge, I’ve decided to make some more cuttings (after the flowering period is over) and plant them in amongst the roses. That way there will be a lovely continuous carpet eventually, and I won’t have to crawl into the hedge to weed.
See! This is what happens when you’re out weeding for a few hours and you let your mind run away with ideas!
The other thing that the weeding session at the rose hedge did, was to make me get a move on tackling the curved heap of rubble left by the digger. Every fibre of my body was dreading this, but the brain was adamant. It had to go, and go soon. Thankfully, this was one thing that was made relatively easy with a bit of planning.
All I needed to do, I kept telling myself, was to clear some of the smaller loose stones away, plonk in the Ajuga cuttings I had set last autumn with this project in mind, and maybe have some fresh soil on hand in case there wasn’t enough between the stones.
Well! It wasn’t hard but it didn’t exactly play out like this either. I’ll continue the story in my next post!
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