Sunday 12 June 2016

GARDEN WORK

Sometime you have to wonder if it's best not to visit beautiful gardens because you only land up returning with plans and schemes to build or plant something similar in your own humble plot!


When we visited Kew Gardens and saw their fabulous Alpine/Rockery beds we were filled with wanting something similar here. This is our little Alpine bed .


Over time it's been overgrown and pretty much left to do it's own thing, the Amphora laying on the grass was in the higher part but completely covered.


Now we'd love to spend a small fortune on a ton and a half of quality rocks but instead we are going to do a no expense version !


So we set about making the walls wider bringing them out to the edge of the first set of four paving slabs on the path.


Here you can see Paul is putting in a retaining wall along the far edge beside the box balls because we know we will not have enough of the broken slabs to make a wall down that side. So we are using some of the old paving slabs that we had for the path before we changed it.


While Paul did the retaining wall, I was reusing the broken slabs to rebuild the dry stone wall in a curve from the original bed to the path.Paul says I'm a natural due to having relatives in Durham County.


Here you can see that the wall is formed and the top layer being formed.


Due to the fact we did not decide to actually start this until quite late in the day , the starting of the rain and the lack of light stopped play.
Which was good as it's allowed us to workout where there are other things we can use to help fill this now large area.

So lets hope the weather's okay tomorrow, Sunday so we can get the stones , earth and grit in , finish the walls and maybe go get  a few large pieces of rock ...


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4 comments:

  1. Oh, well done you! So you do get your hands dirty occassionally and not just a pretty face behind the camera! Looks like it is all taking shape. I have always like rockeries but haven't thespace to do one here.
    The Alpine plants are so attractive with so many varieties to choose from and I remember my late mother and I always bringing back one or two from our frequent garden centre visits for my middle brother's narrow pebbled strip between his tall wooden fence and tarmac driveway and where they thrived really well.

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    1. Ha Ha I'll have you know Kendal that I did a fair amount of work in the garden before Blogging took over But I will always help out and share the work when any restructuring is happening as I need to be there to steer the course ;)
      Your brothers Alpines sound wonderful.

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  2. LOL look at you out there on your knees missus, getting your slippers dirty! ;) Well done though, you're doing a great job but my goodness doesn't it make the knees hurt!!!
    (Or is it just me!)
    x

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    1. :) Getting down is easy getting back up's the problem! lol I do enjoy building these dry stone walls :)xx

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