RHS Harlow Carr

Nothing exciting this weekend, but good progress on a few things. We spent most of Saturday painting windows (a bit late in the year, but hey-ho), and have probably done a bit less than half. We had a day out on Sunday and went to Harlow Carr, which is looking lovely (as you might expect).

RHS Harlow Carr (© Ian 2017)

Most of Monday was spent with the bees, who are winding down for the autumn. And today was spent making a bit of progress on our bathroom renovation plan (ie, progress on making a plan), and measuring the garden paths. Having previously used forestry/hedging chippings for these, we're planning to upgrade to aggregate. It's more expensive in the first place, but shouldn't need replacing every few years, which is both a lot of effort, and ongoing expense. The trouble is getting a suitably large load here, given the access difficulties—and in deciding on a satisfactory type of gravel...

Quick Shift

Just a quick move, tonight—moving the 'Iceberg' rose that has (frankly) languished in a barrel outside the utility room door for years into the colour wheel to grow up the pergola, and planting a variegated jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides 'Variegatum') in its place.

In the Ground

Shockingly quickly, we've planted out the purchases from yesterday's Tatton Park show. It's also entailed rather radically reducing the amount of white valerian in the herb garden (which has spread somewhat invasively), and moving—for example—the yellow lysimachia erupting in the red bed of the colour wheel to its rightful location (that is, the yellow bed) to make way for the much more appropriate Royal Bumble salvias.

Tatton also reinforced our desire to put alliums in, especially, the colour wheel. There are a few, but not that many. We're compromising the nominal colour scheme in the colour wheel in the first half of the year (when we find it difficult to get the full spectrum of flower), so long as it hits the right rainbow notes by July. Earlier in the year, I'll take flowers of any colour, so a healthy number of daffodils, tulips and alliums are probably going to grace the beds. Alliums were beautifully displayed by W S Warmenhoven at the show, so I expect we'll order a wholesale quantity of mixed bulbs from someone in the coming months.

W S Warmenhoven's allium display, RHS Tatton Park (© Ian 2017)

And daffs, if I can get away with it. You know how I love daffodils.

RHS Tatton Park 2017

This week's been the RHS Tatton Park show, and so for the fifth year, we went along to the last day. It was a really good show, as normal, and we were luckier with the weather than expected (the forecast a couple of days before was for heavy rain showers: we actually only had a few minutes of light rain at about 1400).

We made the most of getting there early and went straight to the floral marquee. I think that's best early, before it gets (a) hot, and (b) full of people. We found a number of things we wanted, including some selfheal (Rose and Blue Pearl varieties) to brighten the herb garden, some salvias (Royal Bumble) that will go in the colour wheel, and some blue-flowered garlic chives (also for the herb garden). It's a rather smaller haul than previous years (I think 2016 will forever be our high-water mark for purchases), but that reflects the simple fact that the garden, after eight years being here, is increasingly planted-up, and more space now comes either from replacing plants that die (or we grow bored of), or gradual increases in flower beds at the expense of lawn (see: mulberry bed in the games lawn).

Highlights from the show (all &copy Ian 2017)

RHS Harlow Carr Flower Show

This weekend was the RHS Harlow Carr flower show, which we've never been to before, but made it to. The parking is off site, with a shuttle bus, which meant we had to carry everything back on a bus...

...which was inevitably a lot/more than intended, given the number of good displays and stands.

For the colour wheel purple bed (© Ian 2016)

The rest of the plants! (© Ian 2016)

The geraniums, Purple Ghost, have nice foliage, and should flower soon. The Mathiasella bupleuroides have—as you'd guess—very similar flowers to the Bupleureum rotundifolium we've grown in the colour wheel. However, unlike the annual, this perennial will stick around, which makes life easier.

The cardoons (Cynara cardunculus) are for the herb garden. Instead of making more trellis pyramids, we're going to alternate them with the cardoons. They're perennial, and reasonably evergreen, so they should form a softer, but still architectural, and living repeating element. They're not huge, but the grower seems to have similar conditions to us, and thought they'd get on well.

Porch Floor

Most of the weekend has been spent laying a new floor in the storm porch, to bring it up to the same level as the floor in the preservatory (which, in turn, was raised to be similar to the floor inside).

The floor, as it was, is large York stone slabs, on the same level as the drive (and, therefore, the old garage floor's level, which was raised for insulation and damp-proofing reasons).

The original porch floor (© Ian 2016)

I had a set of new stones delivered, which then needed trimming and arranging to suitably cover the floor. As ever, I needed more mortar than I expected (I never get it right!).

Working out where each stone should go (© Ian 2016)

Eventually, I managed to get them all laid, by the end of Saturday.

The laid slabs (both © Ian 2016)

And today I pointed them. I used a mortar dye to get a buff colour. It's a little mustard-y right now, but I think it will cure to more what I intend. I hope.

The completed and pointed floor (© Ian 2016)

After that was done, I've pricked out brassicas (purple sprouting, sprouts, kale...) into module trays; planted out the dahlias (I've not potted them up and grown them on, though, so we'll see how they do), and sown some of the seeds needed in the colour wheel.

Potatoes

For most of the weekend, Rebekah and her family have been staying with me, mainly so she could go to a friend's 30th. However, yesterday we managed to go to a very nice pub in Blackmoorfoot, which had some good guest ales, and an extremely reasonable three-course fixed menu. We walked round the reservoir afterwards, which the dog and ten-month-old enjoyed (the rest of us squelched, rather). In the evening, Dan and I went to another pub, closer to home, to while away the evening with more guest ales...and gin. It was very pleasant.

Today's been rather more productive. They set off after breakfast, to time travelling with a morning nap; I went out to plant my potatoes (all Lady Christl, this year), and did a couple of hours of weeding. The herb garden and colour wheel are looking much tidier, now. I've sown broad beans in the former; there are flowers to direct-sow soon in the latter, which I'll try to do this week, as the weather is gradually improving.

My onions still haven't arrived, so I can't plant them out yet—hopefully soon.

I came back in, and put the skirting board on the wall behind the desk on the landing, and have filled it. A quick coat of gloss tomorrow evening, and the desk can go back in place,

I realised too late that I should probably have mown the lawn, as I think evenings this week will be damp. Never mind. More positively, though: the frogspawn in the pond is doing really well. There's loads—I'd guess seven clumps.

Frogspawn as laid 14^th March (© Ian 2016)

The first little wrigglers have emerged, now, and the rest will probably do so over the next ten days. The survival fraction is atrocious, but hopefully it'll mean I'll have half a dozen new frogs in the pond.

Frogspawn two weeks later (© Ian 2016)

This evening, I've made some seed bread which looks rather good. It's about 40% white flour, 40% wholemeal, and 20% rye, with sunflower, poppy and sesame seeds, and golden linseeds.

Multi-seed bread (© Ian 2016)

Skirting Boards and Seeds

Lots of small jobs, it seems, today. I've sown a load of vegetable and flower seeds, including about half the sweet peas. I need to get the other half done, soon, too, and there are more vegetables for the coming weeks. If the weather keeps looking promising, I shall direct sow the colour wheel seeds soon.

I've set the seed potatoes chitting, which I realised I failed to do earlier. Never mind: they're sitting out in the preservatory, and I'll plant them in a week or two. The onions, which I'll probably plant at about the same time, are on order.

The stone paving slabs for re-laying the floor in the storm porch were delivered this morning. It'll be a week or two until I get to laying them, I think. We'll see: I might take a day off and do them sooner, so that I can get the new doors ordered.

I have skirting boards (delivered last Wednesday) ready to put up all through the house. I started by trying to cut them by hand (with the aid of a mitre box), but they're a bit tall (169mm), and it's been an annoying process, with decidedly inaccurate cuts. Fortunately, one of my neighbours has a proper 240V mitre saw, with a (frankly oversized) circular saw and bevel mount. I've got on and cut almost all the boards for upstairs, and will try to get them fixed over the next couple of weeks.

Colour Wheel Patio

It's the start of a week off, and we've spent Saturday repainting and reconstructing the arbour, which we brought with us when we moved. It's been lying, dismantled, in front of the beech bench, since we took it down ready to dig over the colour wheel and lay drainage. We started painting it (the bits we wouldn't be able to do once assembled) on Friday night, finishing by torchlight; on Saturday we put it up and finished painting it.

First, though, we had to lay a patio. We shifted the rather uneven surface stones and bricks around, to get a level surface, and have then poured about 1250kg of sharp sand onto it, tamped it down, and placed the roof stones we found, and moved out of the way in March (25th). There aren't enough to lay a complete surface, but there are enough, and the sharply drained gaps we've planted with herbs. We'll need a few more, but they're looking good, and should grow to fill the spaces next year.

Once the patio was laid, and pointed, we rebuilt the arbour, and returned the two clematis in their (fake) lead planters to alongside it: which means the colour wheel is finally completed.

Irrigation

Having got the taps ready, today we installed the irrigation system for the two patios (kitchen and dining room), and the front garden. The colour wheel is simply a hose leading to a bar sprinkler. We didn't have time to do the herb garden, other than to lay the supply hose. The 4mm branches, and associated sprinklers/sprays will have to wait. The other big achievement was to finally repair the leak in the dining room hot water pipe, by doing the bypass I explained yesterday. This seems to have worked, and now means that the leaking pipe is no longer used, and the route hot water takes through the house is much shorter, which should also make it hotter. As a side benefit, the pipe we've taken out of the circuit also appears to be the one that was making the water mucky, as it's now running clear. The repair might have taken six months to solve, but we're finally there, and with a much better set-up.

Watered In

It's been dry for a week, and having moved a lot of earth around, things are actually pretty dry, so, having planted out a lot of plants yesterday afternoon, I've watered everything again. We're now about to drive down to Kent to see David and Ann for a couple of days, calling in to see the cats' friend in Cambridge on our way.

Bobcat

Last bits today for our week of work, as we're off to visit David and Ann tomorrow. We started by moving the last of the topsoil we needed down to the veg garden. There's still a small heap on the driveway, but not very much. There's a mound of mulch on the hillside for the nursery beds, apple walk, and trees, which we'll need to top up with chipping mulch. The rest of the driveway heap is probably going to be used topping up the two beds to the sides of the beech bench.

That done, we had just enough time to plant up some of the herb garden extension and the colour wheel beds, though it did mean we were finishing off, watering in, by moonlight. The box that remained in the herb garden (having moved several into the long border) have neatly delineated the corners of the colour wheel beds—there are similar plantings in the herbaceous borders at Harlow Carr, which I've long admired, and this mimics that. The Tail Feathers grasses (Pennisetum macrourum) that we sowed in January 2014, and grew on all last year, have gone around the outer edges of the beds, to give some boundary and height. We've then planted out a lot of perennials that, mainly, we've been growing on from plug plants for the last year or so, and which overwintered in the greenhouse in 9cm pots. We also put about nine Deschampsia cespitosa that have outgrown the beds near the beech bench (planted 27 Mar 2014?). As a result, the beds are looking much less empty, but there's space we're planning to grow some annuals in, particularly ones that can be useds as cut flowers.

Mid afternoon, though, we also had to say goodbye to Bobcat the mini-digger, after seven days of hard work. It's let us come on leaps and bounds in the garden construction—in fact, structurally, the garden is now all but complete, as the beds are all where we want them. A little more work in the copse, the laying of the patio, and the construction of the pergola around the access ramp, and the Big Things will be done.

Building the Colour Wheel Beds

We took a break from the pond, today, and have spent the day, mostly, moving topsoil around. First thing, a delivery of 6m³ of topsoil arrived from the ever-dependable Tommy Topsoil. Unfortunately, the ground's still pretty wet, so it couldn't all be delivered onto the access ramp into the garden, and two-thirds are on the driveway, instead, which means barrowing it further. Never mind.

Before getting the topsoil moved, though, we first marked out the edges of the new beds in the corner 'Colour Wheel' garden. For this, I bought hand-cleft chestnut stakes, 15" long, which we've put in the ground every 2'. Between these, we've woven cleft chestnut laths—they're usually used to create a matrix onto which lime plaster is applied, in restoration work, but they've worked beautifully here, four courses high, to make 6" edges/retaining walls.

We've then barrowed in topsoil, to cover the soil we've moved from digging the pond. It's actually reasonably good, but a couple of inches of new topsoil will, if nothing else, be less prone to weed germination, and will help to gradually enrich and build the soil.

Once the four new beds were made and topped up, we had enough stakes to mark the intersections of the edging in the herb garden, which is, following Saturday's work, now twice as large. That, in combination with some sticks marking the edges (as well as the intersections), means that the layout is a lot clearer. We've added topsoil here, too, to the squares that will be planted, but not to the areas that will form a path. We still need to decide on a planting plan for the edges: our original plan of box made way to a combination of box, lavender and apples; and then to lavender and apples; it might yet become just step-over apples.

The other place we've moved topsoil to is the vegetable beds, which need an annual topping up. Still need to spread it around, but it's heaped in roughly the right places.

Draining the Colour Wheel

The minidigger arrived yesterday afternoon, and as the evenings are lighter now, we managed to make a start. We discovered that we'd made the path down the drive wide enough, which was good, and got the digger down the ramp, turned (first bit of lawn chewed up!), and over into the corner of the new flower garden. I started by digging up the topsoil and turf, depositing it in the newly marked beds, which revealed the expected clay subsoil. I then moved the heaps of hardcore/rubble, which had been sitting in the beds, back into the corner. We wound up doing a lot of this by hand, as the digger—in my inexperienced hands—was picking up a lot of soil as well as stones.

Once we'd got the stones into the corner, I took the digger to the back of the furthest bed, having dug up the soil in the other sections, to level out and dig over. It sounds quick, now, and in many ways it was fast to do, too: the topsoil there isn't very stony, and the digger made quick work of it.

However, the messy work was only just starting, and unfortunately, so was drizzle. The rest of the day has been tiring, wet, muddy work, digging three trenches across the garden and laying land drain (in geotextile sock, as before), to improve the drainage. This corner of the garden's always been really wet, with standing water and waterlogged soil through the winter, which has always limited its usefulness. The landdrains are the first part of trying to fix this. There's an old clay pipe land drain, which is broken off at the top end (we think, at the site of an old milking parlour), but does drain away into the lower parts of the garden. It goes into the copse, which, if anything, is drier than needed, so diverting water to here is no bad thing.

We managed, before collapsing inside, to get an L-shaped pipe along the top of the beds, and down into the old pipe; one across the garden just under the bottom edge of the patio, and one two-thirds of the way down the garden. Between them, they should sort out the drainage, but we'll also be raising the ground level with the spoil from the pond, which we anticipate being gravelly (that is, better draining) soil.

Marking Out

This weekend hasn't brought anything particularly exciting, but we've managed to get exactly through the list of preparations for the mini-digger's arrival that we drew up at Christmas, which is pleasing.

The last of the patio flagstones are out of the way, and the arbour has been dismantled and moved to the seating area in front of the beech hedge bench (well out of the way). It'll be there for some time, and the arbour is far too heavy to move intact: stacked neatly there, it won't kill any grass, and we can give it a good clean, and a coat of paint, before reassembling it once we get the patio relaid.

We've moved the two dustbins and packing crate, which have been filled with water in an attempt to keep a number of wet/pond plants going since being pulled out of Jenny's pond when she filled it in. The irises are clearly alive, though I remain unconvinced about the others.

Once these were out of the way, we've used a number of poplar rods to mark out the planned edges of the pond, and flower beds in the new colour-wheel garden, and the patio that will form the corner of this. We're happy with how they're all looking, but we've got a few days to consider them from different angles, before the digger arrives on Maundy Thursday.

We've had a bit of a potting up session, putting tomatoes, peppers (sweet and chilli), and cauliflowers into pots from their sown modules. The caulis always look quite sad for a couple of weeks after transplanting, but should be fine, and we've got more of the others than we need. There's a third sort of tomato (Black Russian) still to go, but these two (Maskotka and Alicante) are ready to pot on.

Finally, we've sawn the wood from the shed base (mostly requiring sawing, rather than splitting, as it's drier than we usually split wood, and I think it's oak, to boot), and that's allowed us to lift the base (sawn up and flung into a corner of the orchard, where I'll make a compost bay later this year). It's a relief to discover that there are just three cast-in-situ concrete beams on which the base was supported, and not a whole slab of concrete.

Having got to end of our excavation-preparations, we've been able to do a bucket-worth of plastering, meaning that our bedroom's back wall, and most of the sewing room's bathroom-wall, are now done. Slowly getting there!

Stones

Liz had today off work, and has done sterling work clearing the last of the stones from the pond location (now forming a growing stack around the periphery of that garden, between the fruit trees), as well as lifting almost all of the patio stones (I've helped with the last, heavy, well-adhered/trapped-by-grass ones) and putting them well out of the way. She's even managed to move all the pots off the grass in the herb garden, so we're onto the last bits and bobs to be ready for the mini-digging in ten days.

Planning to Dig

Over Easter, we're hiring a micro excavator (mini digger) to dig the pond, and also do some heavy (quick) work preparing the base for the arbour patio, turning over and creating the beds in the colour wheel, and—time permitting—break the ground for the last of the herb garden.

That's lead to us spending a lot of this weekend (and, for me, today) clearing the colour wheel beds, and the pond, of the collected detritus. For several years, although the colour wheel beds were briefly marked out in April 2012, it's not been much of anything, and has had several heaps of brushwood, a few bins of rescued pond plants, and gradually amassing heaps of stones dug out elsewhere. The pond was, for a while, a huge heap of brush from the trees and cotoneaster we took out, until we shredded that over the weekend of the Royal Jubilee later in 2012. It's been misused in the same way, to a smaller extent, since, though, and Liz has spent a good bit of the weekend running things through the smaller Archimedes Screw chipper we have.

In incredible news, we even managed to mow the lawn, with Liz raking ahead of me, which has really helped, and the lawn looks almost respectable for the first time in months. The wet but mild autumn meant that my hoped-for 'last cut' of the year never happened, meaning a scruffy lawn since September, really.

Inside, we've potted up our various dahlias, and chocolate cosmos. When we were weeding in the herb garden, I discovered that the runner beans tubers (or are they corms, or rhizomes?) had survived the winter. They're a perennial, strictly, but not that hardy, so they're usually grown as an annual in the UK. However, we thought we'd pot them up, too, and see if they come into growth as the year warms up.

We've had to do some more wood chopping, too, to clear a path down the drive for the mini-digger. I think it's wide enough, now, but we shall need to do some more, including a few last pieces on the old shed base. If we have time, digging that bit over with the excavator is on the list, which means I need to clear the firewood off it in advance, and check there's not a huge slab of concrete hiding under the timber...