Our new garden project 7--another path and an arch

The next stage of our garden project was to continue with the path work. The bottom of the garden was now looking good, but needed linking to the house where the flagged area was. I had always wanted an arch to grow climbers up and could just picture one at the end of the patio leading out onto the garden. So our next plan was to complete the path from the seating area up to the patio through the arch and have a small flower bed each side of the archway. Holly the cat loves being in the garden with us and follows us around as we work.

After all that had been completed so far in the garden, this was a much smaller project and was finished in no time. As usual Richard was the builder and I was the designer and planter. The arch was put in place first and then the sleepers for the raised beds either side. The same system for building the path was used again with gravel and topped with slate chippings.

 I decided to delay the planting up of the two beds as we were going to have some rendering work done on the back wall of the house and I didn't want anything getting in the way of the builders or being damaged by them. The plants in pots which you can see in the photos are herbs which had been on the patio and were moved there to be out of the way of the builders.

In the meantime I gave a lot of thought to what I wanted to put in these two small beds. We visit a lot of gardens open to the public which gives me lots of ideas for my own garden. I like to be able to look at a garden and not see the whole of it in one go. So my idea is to have the arch covered in climbers and plants either side which will provide a bit of screening when we are sitting on the patio. I'm so looking forward to the scaffolding being taken down so that we can get on with the next phase of our garden on the flagged area.

January progress

January is not a good month for getting work done on the allotment. Snow and ice is often the problem, this month is has been rain and wind.  But there have been bright spells.  We've watched the weather forecasts to decide if it's been safe to go to the allotment for an hour or two.  We've managed that a few times this month and every little helps.

At the start of the month the job was to tidy up some of the rubbish still lying around on plot 8. This was mainly stuff cleared out of the old shed and wood from the demolishing of the shed. We spent a few fine days sorting through the rubbish, deciding what we wanted to keep (it might come in useful one day). We ended up with several bags of glass, plastic, metal and general rubbish which went to the local recycling centre. There is now a pile of wood waiting for the right day to have a bonfire and stacked up at the back of the shed out of the way is all the wood which we want to keep. There's always something to be made or repaired on an allotment so it's useful to have some decent pieces of wood.

We gained a few useful items as well as wood--lots of plant pots, a folding wooden garden chair, several sheets of membrane fabric, loads and loads of tubular poles and connectors which were probably once assembled as grow houses and staging. One day we will sort through them and see if we can make anything with them. It will be quite a puzzle I'm sure.

I started to clear the weeds from the new beds which had been dug over at the end of the summer. There's still lots of  weeding to be done but it's a start.

The next job was to top the raised beds on plot 10b with composted manure. This was a job we started in the autumn but stopped as Christmas took over. First job was the rhubarb bed then the blackcurrant and gooseberry bed. Finally the old roots bed which will have peas and beans in later this year. The raised beds on plot 10b now look very tidy.

The polytunnel was in need of some attention and I made a start on cleaning the inside with Algon.  I then  tackled the borders which are heavy clay soil.  I topped the beds with some manure and compost.

In the meantime Richard has made a start on building the path up to the polytunnel. This area has been causing some problems in wet weather because the soil is clay and becomes very wet and slippery. He's making some long steps up the slight slope. So far he has made a wooden frame (using our supply of spare wood of course) and is now filling in with hardcore before the final gravel topping.

 

As we come to the end of the month, the weather is not just rainy but extremely cold too. I'm glad we made the most of the fine days to get those jobs done.