Today I carried on with my "project" garden - continuing with the jobs I started last week and working on the list I made after my first visit. It was a much nicer day today - last week it rained pretty much all the time I was there - but today was sunny, although fresh.
One of the first jobs I did was to saw up all the branches I'd cut down last week to get them all into black sacks. The brown bin has not arrived yet, and I wanted to make sure that access through the side gate wasn't impeded by a forest!
I also sawed down the remaining offshoot of the garden tree which makes the garden look much bigger and opens everything out now.
I also chopped down some overhanging branches from the neighbour's tree, just where it came down into Amanda's garden. It makes everything much lighter now and I am going to experiment with some daffodil bulbs around the base of the remaining tree.
I tried to work out which way the garden faces according to the light, but I don't think I was there long enough for that. The light was very strange, just a small block of it moving slowly around the left hand side of the garden.
I recycled some old plant pots and planted up some of the forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) which I had dug up from my own garden this morning. I then moved those pots to the "trench", firstly to try and stop doggy-digging, but also to put them out in the open where they will get more light. I'm not sure where the plants had been placed before in the garden - I found them round by the shed - but it will be interesting to see which is the best place for sunlight. I may need to move the pots around as an experiment for a while yet, until I'm happy with their positioning.
I am currently in my first year studying for my RHS Level 2 in Horticulture and attend Easton and Otley College one evening a week for the first year, and then one evening plus one whole day a week for the second year. This week, coincidentally, we started working on "soil" and apparently any soil that has stinging nettles in it is very good soil indeed. After last week's cursing about the proliferation of nettles, I'm now very pleased that I have a very good canvas to work with, which was also evidenced by the size of the very fat worms that were coming up with the tree roots I was pulling up this morning. This is good news indeed.
Time spent working in this garden today: 2.5 hours
Jobs completed: sawed down remaining tree suckers; pulled up tree roots and brambles; dug up weeds; bagged up rubbish and left by back gate; cut back some mint and planted in a pot on the patio; planted forget-me-nots; rescued hellebores from their weed-encrusted pot and added some more compost; moved pots into trench and watered well. .
Jobs for future visit: decide what to do with hole in lawn; dig out more weeds;
empty the remaining plant pots; take shears to cut
grass before lawn mowing can commence again next year; buy grass seeds
and sow into seed trays to make small clumps of grass to plant out in
garden; dig up excess foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) from my own garden to plant in pots for interest;
sow tulip and iris bulbs in pots for spring interest; sow daffodils at the base of the tree; research Helen Dillon garden which is made up of pots of plants which are moved around to avoid planting into soil; discuss benefits of water butt; decide position of compost bin and wheelie bins (currently on patio) and make small level area for these; concentrate on the area behind the bike shed and patio; split osteospermum into different pots.
Note: not all these jobs will be done in just one visit!
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