My New Garden.

Back To Diary Articles.

After finally removing the large Conifer in the border at the back of the garden we found that there was a concrete foundation, belonging to some long forgotten building, buried in the rubble and soil. After a little consideration I decided to plant a Fig Tree in the space. I had a 5 feet high, potted, cutting, that I had taken from a special, Variegated variety called Panachee. Traditionally, here in the UK, Fig Trees have always been planted in a hole lined with paving slabs and part filled with a mixture of Rubble and soil. It was thought that the impoverished mixture would restrict their growth and encourage fruiting. So, I dug out the planting hole between the Concrete walls as deep as the buried builders rubble would let me and then filled it with some of my own Rubble and some of the excavated soil. After that I removed the rest of the row of Slabs. 

This is how the Border looks now it has been roughly dug over and filled up with both, part rotted compost from my Allotment and a few Plants. Some of the plants came from Work including a compact growing Bamboo,  several Herbaceous plants and a frosted Callistemon that came from my mothers house which I hoped would recover. After this the Border was beginning to look something like. The Quince has a few flowers starting to show, but the Fig is only just starting to leaf up. Now, (In the middle of May) the Acca Selowiana, (planted elsewhere) that got badly frosted, is budding up nicely and I am hoping that it is not imagination, but there really are a few buds swelling on the Callistemon, (in the middle of the picture) that also suffered badly from the sharp frosts last Winter.

Recycling Rubble.

At first I couldn't decide whether to buy a new greenhouse, or not as I felt I couldn’t justify the cost with the few vegetable plants that I normally grow, so I thought about having a new, small, shed instead. A friend pointed out that there are wooden buildings that are part shed and part greenhouse. I vaguely remembered seeing one at a Garden Centre many years before, but a brief search on the Net revealed a local company that made a “Potting Shed,” that seemed ideal. However, when I compared the price of a Potting Shed to the cost of a similar sized, traditional, metal Greenhouse, they were over twice the price. Consequently, I settled on a greenhouse after all and after making my choice for the size that would fit the space I needed to prepare the slabbed area for it. Some slabs needed relaying as was expected, but looking behind the old, existing shed I found barrow-loads of assorted rubbish. Sorting through it I stacked the bricks for reuse and the many pieces of broken slabs were also put on one side. Part bags of sand and gravel were rescued, but the broken pots, seed trays and plastic bags were all binned. That left a pile of rubble and the question of what to do with it. Recycling centres charge for its disposal these days, so I decided to bury it, because after all, many people put a layer of hardcore under slabs when laying them. The space that I had cleared behind the existing shed could usefully be slabbed and looked as though it had good soil underneath. So I dug a trench and used the soil to top up some of my new borders that I had recently created. Next I buried the rubble in the trench – tamping it down and leveling it out ready for the slabs. Finally I sorted through the pile of pieces of broken slabs assembling them like a Jigsaw to make a useful stretch of Crazy Paving. Obviously, then I had to carefully remove them all to relay them in a sloppy mix of Concrete (using the rescued part bags of sand and gravel) and point them up to give a smooth surface. Some people lay Crazy Paving directly onto Hard Core, but putting a sloppy mix of Concrete underneath makes a more solid end product when it dries and makes it easier to lay the paving. After my exertions - all that was left of the half a ton, or so of rubbish that was behind the old shed, was a smallish pile of broken slabs that might be used somewhere else later.

I had saved all of the various bricks that had been unearthed from under the trees in the process of clearing the garden and a number of them were the fancy yellow reconstituted stone bricks that are often used to make low garden walls. The retaining wall for my lower patio was made using this type of brick, so when I decided to widen the bottom step to make it 3 slabs wide instead of 2, it meant that I had bricks to match in. I even managed to match in the 2 different sorts of slabs used to make the ascending path leading from them. One slab had been saved from previous work done on straightening the path and the other from work done on the patio itself. I also had some yellow sand to alter the colour of the cement and match in the pointing on the brickwork with the existing walling. Unfortunately, in my haste to lay the bricks I forgot to "Edge," or "Face," them. This is where the edges of the soft bricks are carefully cut back using a Lump hammer and Bolster Chisel to recess the pointed edges. The bricks when laid then have a much more decorative finish enabling the pointing to be set back from the face of the brick which then stands proud. Also to improve the finish on the brickwork a wire brush should be used on the pointing a day after laying to brush away untidy splashes and excess mortar before it gets too hard.

Curing A Drainage Problem.

The yellow slab was made available when my builder friend did some work on the Drainage for the patio. Outside the Workshop door, that goes out onto the Patio,  a pool of water always gathered due to the slabs settling a bit. One way to clear this would have been to relay all the slabs with a proper slope away from the house to drain the water away from the house walls safely. However, the patio is 30 feet wide and the slabs had been well and truly concreted in. Also my friend had to do some work on a drain that was damaged and very close by, so the simple solution was to install a drainage channel outside the door that could feed the water directly into the drain. It meant taking up a small row of slabs and laying a bit of concrete to fit the Plastic channeling which was then connected by pipe into the repaired drain. The channeling was simply a heavy duty, plastic, Domestic version of the same thing that you often see in Car parks with metal grids over them. Installing the system was not particularly cheap, but was a lot cheaper and easier than relaying dozens of slabs, given the circumstances.

Click Here For Page 1

Click Here For Page 2

Click Here For Page 4

Click Here For Page 5

Click Here For Page 6 My New Front Garden