Orchard landscaping

buildingsiteI’m trying to work out just how many pictures of bare earth you can tolerate.

A whole month as passed since you saw this part of the garden. My giant year-long landscaping project.

The good news is it’s done.  Well the weeding and the landscaping is done.

I still need to transplant about thirty large eragrostis grasses. And unearth the ballota plants that are hiding in the mess that is still my potager.

I could try and shove in some sage as well. But they aren’t ready.

At least I have saved these two cherries from an ignominious strangling with weeds. The wall behind is a bramble hotel. And I have neglected the rest as it was always a stumbling stagger up the slope to reach the trees.

cherrystrangled

In fact I’m going to be leaving a lot of gaps so I can add as I go. I have cuttings of rosemary and santolina which might go here too.

prerakeBut the mulching is going to be vital as well.  All this gorgeous weed free dirt is not going to last this way for long.

Actually I was thinking long and hard about the nature of this bank as I was face first in the soil.  Ten years ago this bank didn’t exist.

Bulldozers working Oct 07It was a sloping field.  And then we asked a bulldozer team to come and create a swimming pool. And from the distance of ten year’s experience I wish I knew more then than I do now.

Top soil. That’s what is precious in all gardens.  But the bulldozer team we had didn’t have much truck with fussy gardeners. And this whole bank is a shocking mess.  At the end closest to the house the soil is sub soil. Poor, more crushed rock than actual soil. And a dreadful mess. Not the environment you would want to raise plants.

wallexplosedAnd I did.

This end where I have been working this week is just chocolate cake.  I get the idea that all the top soil was shoved down this end and rest of the shaping of the terrace was left to an after lunch slump of a driver who just wanted to get away with shaping the terrace and move on.

I’m being bitter. I’m not. It’s just that gardeners and landscapers need to work a bit more authoritatively with anyone with a bulldozer machine anywhere near their soil.

preweed2

Curiously, this was what my friend Andrew wrote to me when I relayed my bulldozer woes. I hope he won’t mind repeating his words:

I had exactly the same experience – what we wouldn’t give for one day of good bull dozer work now!  This was my experience:  my neighbour halfway along the track hired a bulldozer + man for a day to make a track so he could drive further down into his plot.  And in order to make it cheaper for him he asked if I wanted any bulldozer work done.  All my terraces had had vines, and were very furrowed, which was going to be a problem for mowing, so I said yes, can he come and level the terrace.  Well, I expected he would level the terrace and leave it you know, a bit like a football pitch or something.  But he scraped all the topsoil off and said where do you want me to put the soil.  So I ended up with a huge shapeless heap of soil at the far end of the terrace which it took me years to work out how to integrate into the garden!

So I’m not alone.  And the sad thing is I have been excavating a buried wall as well. I do wonder just how much precious wall there was ten years ago. I’ll never know as I didn’t take a detailed survey of the land at the time. Curses.

stonepilesBut I have exposed a bit more, and scraped back ten years of soil that was building up at the far end of the wall.  And raked and weeded and hoed like mad.

This afternoon I finished the lot.  There was a pesky two square metre patch of weed and grass at the far end (near the stables) which had to be dug out.

preweed1And then I came up with a solution for all those stones. I have way too many to just pile up in the middle of the bank.

finishedhurrahInstead I excavated a trench at the bottom of the bank, back filled with a thousand small stones. and then placed larger stones on the top.

I am utterly pleased with my work. I even came back down at dusk to admire my handiwork.  Well, that and to cajole Artur out of the potting shed to come for a walk. He’s the only creature on this mountain top not appalled by the sight of my filthy dirt encrusted jeans.

finished1