Plaster Rocks and Garden Blooms - May 2025
I haven't written in a long while; lot's of life happening in between. I did not stop gardening however, although a large part of the garden did have a hard reset in 2023-2024.
At this point in time, peace has returned to the garden.
We had been working to get part of our house remodeled for a good amount years, and in fall of 2023 that finally started. The 80's attachment bordering on the back garden was demolished, and then rebuilt. Lots was wrong structurally with the old attachment, even though it was much younger than the 1920's main part of the house. Winter-spring of 2024 the remodel was done, with a brand-new kitchen and laundry area. The latter is an especially welcome addition, because we also had a baby not long after!
Part of our house smashed to bits.
The garden... was for a good part destroyed. For the back garden I had to remove one of the raised beds close to the house, and plants around it. Many of the plants I left, that I did not think were in the danger-zone, were killed in the process of the rebuild by people walking over it, and them putting tiles and junk on it (which with such a large remodel was pretty much unavoidable I guess, but it hurt! I may have cried about it too at the time.). I managed to save my hard to find Camelia on time furtunately, by digging it up and moving it a few weeks into the rebuild. I would have been very sad to lose that. Much of the rest is replaceable, although it will take some years.
At this point most of the garden was still intact, but not for long.
The lowest part came long after the rebuild, when I found that the plasterers has dumped their left-over plaster in a hole they dug in the central bed of my back garden. I found that out when in the fall of 2024 I wanted to replant much of what had died. Earlier I had noticed that someone dug in that border (some of the bulbs layed on top of the soil), and that there were pieces and layers of plaster all around that border, but I hadn't predicted that they dumped their entire plaster bucket in my garden. Clearly this is not normal - and completely unnecessary because there was a large container for junk they could have left it in. The plasterers heard about it, although I unfortunately did not manage to convince our contractor to make them come back to dig it up themselves.
Especially unfortunate because during the remodel I was pregnant, our son was born at the end of summer 2024, and I was still very much recovering from a delivery with complications (and there were no painkillers for that part of the delivery I'll have you know!), then I finally had time and the physical capability to fix the wreck of the garden, and THEN I found layers of plaster gunk and a huge plaster rock in my beloved garden.
A few months ago I finally got to digging the plaster out, and it was about 40 liters of solid plaster!
I was not amused to put it lightly and I may still carry around a grudge for it. I made angry pictures and videos of the rock. I guess however it makes kind of a funny story.
This is the stupid plaster rock after I chiseled it to bits to get it out.
The rest of the rebuild was actually a very nice process (as nice as something so stressful can be, we also had to move out for multiple months), and we are very happy with the result.
We also added a new area to the garden with it: we now have a green roof on the new attachment. It has a mix of sedum and perennials on it, and I might write more about it later when it has matured.
In the original garden however, almost nothing that was evergreen survived the remodel. Essentially every part of the garden that was starting to look nice, was reset to being a mess. And not just in the back garden... but also the front garden, because they needed space to dump a huge pile of sand. And they did that right on top of the front garden plants. Had I known I would have removed my (relatively expensive) agaves that were in there. They died.
After half a year of remodeling we moved back in, and I gradually went on to restore the garden. I found that pretty much everything that was not everygreen recovered, and some of the evergreen grasses were saved. I added new plants in, and moved seedlings to proper places to fill in gaps that had appeared. I happened to find new agaves for cheap online. I redesigned part of the back garden to make more room for the central border, making smaller gravel path next to the raised beds. A few weeks ago I laid the new path myself, and I'm thrilled with the result.
The before and after picture is early March to early May this year.
My work in the fall and early this year have paid off! May and June are the best garden months, and the back garden is looking better than ever.
The photo above include my favorite rose "Compassion".
In the future, we want to add a tree and replace the tiled paths and patio. That will take some years however, because we have to save for that. Also, we need a new roof, and that will happen somewhere this year. Here's hoping my front garden and new roof garden are not destroyed in that process... At least I know now to move the precious/expensive plants before that happens, even if you think they are not in a danger-zone.