Over the last few weeks we’ve been gardening. Well, when I say “gardening”, I mean “razing to ground and rebuilding from scratch”. Some of you will realise that the outdoors is not my natural habitat and manual labour is not my first choice of ways to spend the weekend.
However, it had to be done and it’s (finally) very nearly finished. We had one major problem left yesterday – the huge pile of jungle that we had removed in order to replace it with low-maintenance gravel. I started cutting it up and putting in bags, but it soon became obvious that this a) would take several hours and b) was no fun. So we switched to plan B. We burnt it.
Bonfires fun. Fire good.
Give a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life. (Pratchett)
Low maintainence eh?
You need to remember to put down plenty of weed barrier underneath the gravel, and you’ll also be surprised just how much gravel you need :(
We’ve got commercial “Mypex” fabric down which allows water through, but should keep weeds at bay but weeds still grow through any hole they can find in it, and dirt accumulates in it and they can grow in that – on the plus side they’re easy to pull out as they can’t put thick roots through it.
The beeb have a good guide to Low maintenence gardens, but it neglects the Kiwi plant that will survive almost anything and still look great : Phormiums! We have ours planted in some holes we made in the mypex so it looks as if they’re growing in the gravel
Have a look at my wife’s range of phormium, she does Ornamental Grasses and other hardy, hassle free plants as well. And of course the website is perl :)
Don’t worry, we’ve got industrial strength lining down under the gravel. And we’ve put something like 12 twelve tons[1] of gravel down.I wish I’d have known about your wife’s site a month ago. We’ve done all our plant shopping now.[1] Actually, I’m not sure if it’s tons or tonnes.
Even with that – assorted crud will collect in your gravel and weeds will grow out of that, and their roots will eventually break the fabric if you leave them for long enough :(Now you have the plants in and gravel down you can enjoy bbq’s and the tennis :)You should have mentioned you were doing your garden earlier – I’d have sorted out a ‘Head Perl Monger of the world’ discount!