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Tackling the back garden - May 26th 2019
At the end of May we made a start on dealing with the most outer part of our garden. There is an old border there which was completely overgrown with ivy, weeds, three box shrubs that were eaten completely bare by box moth caterpillars, and a couple of (fortunately) still small acers that seeded in there.
This border sits against an east facing fence that separates us from our neighbors. Tim and I were planning on tackling this area soon after the nesting season, to get rid of all the weeds and planting there, and start shaping a new border in the back yard. However, the east facing fence is in a very poor condition - which we were very actively ignoring after all the months of remodeling our house - and our neighbour rightly so felt it was time to do something about it. For us that means getting rid of the crazy overgrowth in that border sooner rather than later, such that we can remove the fence, and of course, place a new one. This will be hard work and cost some time, although we plan on outsourcing the placing of the fencing. So last week we got out the cutters and machete and, after carefully inspecting if we could detect any nesting birds or hedgehogs, hacked and snipped away. We uncovered the large tree stump which was underneath a sprawl of ivy, and it turned out much further degraded than we expected. This is good news, because now it will be much easier to work with when we start on the new structure in the back yard.
I'm currently working on digging out the box shrubs (1 done, 2 to go) which have rooted through the entire border. While digging I unearthed the original plastic label of the box shrubs, plastic toys/garden deco, large pebblestones, roof tiles, and shards of glass - working in this garden/house is always glove-and-good-shoe-work until one has taken care of an area. The next steps will be removing part of the concrete posts on the side of the border next to the tree stump. After that, the fencing can be removed, and after getting rid of all the cuttings we can start shaping the new back yard. It is a mess now, and it will look worse before it gets better, but in my mind I can already picture the lush private corner it could become. I'm sure the new fencing will also make a huge difference in the appearance of the whole garden.
