New Leaves: Part II

One of the few regrets we had about moving from our old house, was leaving the garden behind. While not large, the old garden had been well looked after for a good few years before we got there and was, as the estate agents say "well-established". It had a variety of attractive shrubs and perennials, a greenhouse, a shed, and a nice little pond full of frogs which set up a soothing chirping on warm summer days and kept the slugs down.

The garden at the new house is probably larger over all, but as with the rest of the house no one has looked after it in a very long time. When we arrived the whole thing (three sides of the house, since we're on the end) was dominated by one thing: a large, unkempt, badly-maintained conifer hedge.* The rest of the garden - apart from the paved area - was just grass, interspersed with the occasional dandelion, dock, and rather a large number of beer cans.

I knew this hedge of old, since, when we lived round the corner and I walked this way to the shops, I was always forced to walk in the road because I couldn't get the double buggy between The Hedge and the parked cars, so I was pretty determined to get rid of as much of the wretched thing as possible as soon as possible. A quote to have it taken out left us reeling, so we decided to have a go ourselves - or rather C and my brother did - and fortunately it proved not to be all that hard (the hardest thing being keeping the boys away from the big shiny axe!).

The demise of the horrible hedge: part I.

(The result of) the demise of the horrible hedge: part II.

So, in the course of the last year we have removed something in the region of 30 conifers, cut down two large trees**, substantially reduced the trees that remain, scraped a huge amount of ivy off the side of the house (allowing us to open two windows which were previously welded shut with vegetation), dug a gravel-filled trench to keep the soil away from the damp-course, dug and planted two flowerbeds at the front and three at the back, and made a start on improving the grass : dandelion/thistle/rubbish ratio in the so-called "lawns". There's still a long way to go, but now spring has just about sprung and a few things are starting to grow, it's beginning to feel a bit more like a garden. All I have to do now is find some way of deterring the cats from using every patch of bare earth as a lavatory, and stop the wretched postman walking through my new flowerbeds because he can't be bothered to go up the path!

*Just in case there wasn't enough of it, the previous owners had also left us a large pile of clippings outside the back gate.
** Of which more anon.