Easter Monday

Sunny and bright weather today tempted us out to Squires Nursery in Hook near Kingston upon Thames. This is a smallish place but well stocked. Bought some spiral plant supports (for the sweet peas I have yet to sow) and some lawn food and log edging for the middle border which I have been digging out ready for replanting this Spring.

We have been really busy since last weekend when we cleared the old pond of the overgrown irises. I started edging the lawn - really hard work this as I have cut about 6 inches away where it has grown into the border over the last year or so. The clay is heavy and still a bit sticky. I have piled all these offcuts at the end of the garden to rot down. Grass side down - they will make nice loan after a couple of years. You need patience to garden properly - no makeovers here.....

The plan is to raise the flower beds on the uphill side of the garden so they are better drained. This requred some stury edging and a line of bricks to hold it in place. The bricks are set below the lawn level so that they can be mown over. They also provide somewhere for the water to drain if it is very wet. 20+ years ago when we moved in to this house the lawn was under water for weeks on end during the winter and spring. The clay is impervious and so holds the water on the surface to some extent.
Since then we put a large flowerbed in te centre of the lawn with gravel and lots of compost under the top soil. It soaks up quite a lot of the water and we dont have so much of a problem. I did consider land drains but they have to go to a soak away and at the time we didn't have the energy to dig them all across the garden. There was nowhere to put the soakaway. Since those days we have remodeled part of the garden and have possilbe sites but less of a problem! When the children grew up we could dispense with part of the lawn too - no football pitch needed these days. Just enough to have the sunbeds on under the fruit trees if shade is required.

This time of year is exhausting - I'm not fit having spent the winter hibernating so cannot put the required amount of effort into the garden to keep it in tip top form. We used to have a gardener to do the lawn and odd heavy jobs but no longer. So the older I get the more heavy work I need to do.