Magical Trevor is ten times as slick as the last time; the last time you saw him.
Today dad came up and we defeated the Front Bed Of Doom (FBOD). Previous owner had made a ‘rockery’ which was basically alpines amongst chunks of crazy paving and lumps of concrete/aggregate. This is not sustainable unless you a) really love weeding and b) really love glyphosate (Eg Round Up). I had previously tried to defeat the FBOD by glyphosating it, removing almost all of the ‘rockery rocks’ (I have a very useful pile of crazy paving now, we only found three chunks today that I’d missed) and covering with some very substandard weed membrane from B&M (who knew weed membrane could be basically biodegradable?) and not quite enough discounted shale from Homebase before it closed. And I planted a cherry tree. Who is still mildly offended to live here but is getting over it.
Fast forward to today 18-24 months after my first attempt and we now have a thin layer of shale on top of degrading shreds of ridiculous fragile weed membrane ranging from fragments 1 inch square upwards, with weeds happily meshing the membrane into their root systems. All on top of the most disappointing soil I’ve ever encountered (note- I grew up in Essex. Our soil there is damn good clay based stuff. My frame of reference is narrow, I expect a lot. But I’m fairly sure that sandy soil 4 inches deep on top of 4 inches of building site crud (sharp sand and gravel) is Not Good Soil. Even my Lavender is sad. Luckily below all this rubbish we discovered some decent clay, albeit so firm we needed a mattock to make a dent. Go Clayhall).
Today we turned it from the first image (which I think is even then a little while in; photos courtesy of Dad as I forgot to take any) to the above image, the end result, including planting an Adam’s Laburnum (I’ve always wanted a Laburnum and the Adam’s hybrid is crossed with a broom to make it a mix of purple and yellow) and two brooms (which I bought before I discovered the hybrid Adam’s Laburnum existed). We also disentangled two pots of and a large pile of shale from the weeds, ‘weed membrane’ and said most awful soil in my existence.
Very good post Father’s Day day. Spockie was also happy as got to sit with one of his favourite humans after the work was done.
