A garden excavated

I’ve earned my beer. If there was a committee of garden judges standing by the garden with clipboards there would have been applause. 930pm last night and I took these shots.

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Gardening is not a competitive sport. But I must admit I was competing with myself. I have so many garden maintenance projects that are stacking up.

So I just wanted to get as much of this excavation work done as I could today.

So despite the heatwave. And here is the garden bed I was working in full blazing sunshine…

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I powered on.

Too much time in the dirt. I wanted to create one proper bit of structure today.  So that meant digging and digging up ivy and lilac suckers.

And I made a decision. Late last night I was hauling buckets of soil up to the top of the mountain. And there was a touch of sciatic ping from the effort.

So today I decided that I would shovel all the excess soil onto the front of the bed. Yes, burying some ivy, lilac, nameless plants, rocks rubbish.  But in the hope that I would be able to attack the very front of the garden bed at a later date.

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I think that ivy right at the front has to go. I can see proper wall under there.

But frankly, it is staying for now. I have to attack the weeds at the very top of the bank first. More urgent.

And the entire front of the bank needs a re-design. But I won’t order the lavender Hidcote I want until Autumn. And I think I will extend the use of stipa gigantea as well.  But that sort of planning is a long way off.

So what did I do?

I dug out yet more soil. I decided that all the ivy had to go on the area close to the base of the wall I have laboriously dug out. I even scraped the entire area with a wire brush to remove the dirt (sad, I know).

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That way I could unearth the fallen rocks and rebuild the mini wall. Anything on the top side of the wall had to have pristine sifted soil, weed free and ready for planting. Anything to the lower side was for a later date.

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I carried some rocks from my store beside the guest house. Note rock custodian who had another busy supervising day.  The poor cat was so hot, he was very floppy.

And to finish it off I added the mulch from all the branches of deutzia chippings. It’s going to be a narrow bed which I think I will plant up with sedums. iris and maybe some tall verbena bonariensis.

But not this week. Another heatwave blast is not the best time to be shoving in plants.

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And how about this happy discovery? I found this oak tree buried under the weight of ivy and weeds while I was trying to trace the wall. It was bent over so far the poor tree needed a sturdy stake to get it back upright..

I think I’ll keep it for now. A bit of green among the dirt is no bad thing.

So there you have it. You can tell I’m itching to celebrate with more beer. And a shower. I’m covered in dirt. And wreathed with smiles at a brilliant day’s work.

This was only a few days ago.

 

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