How does your garden grow – July 4th

Ant and I worked on the concrete circle for Nanny’s rotary washing line this week. I removed the turf and prepared the area then we started mixing the concrete. I helped and did quite well, even if I do say so myself!

I don’t know why it’s looking wonky at the bottom of the photo!

When it’s hardened off, I’ve got to dig out the plants at the back. I think we’ll probably replant the area with low growing, low maintenance perennials.

When that was finished and Ant went back inside to change light fittings, fit door locks and lay kitchen tiles, I started on a major project in the garden. It’s a project that is going to take me a very long time to finish, especially as I’ve never attempted it before; I’ll be ok though because I have the SWH (super wonderful husband) to call on if I have any problems 🙂
Nanny’s garden has a very long, very uneven brick path. I’ve tried to show how long it is on the photos….

This part of the path connects the long path in the middle of the garden

I made a start and lifted over 100 bricks in a couple of hours. The bricks are really loose and lifting them wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be, thankfully!

I’m going to be making the path a bit wider and doing a different design when I re-lay it because we want to incorporate stones in the path to tie in with the mint border, circular rotary line base and stone pot area.

We were going to put sharp sand on the base but Ant said it will be fine to tamp down the soil, lay weed matting and put the path on the matting.
As long as I get the base soil level and well compacted first, the path should last for years 🙂
I was a bit dubious when he first said it because everything I’ve read said you should put sand down but I trust Ant’s judgement. It has nothing to do with the fact that Alan Titchmarsh, on an old episode of Ground Force, said he laid bricks on soil 20 years ago and it’s still fine! 🙂

When I dig the bed for the path I’m also going to re-dig the flower borders. They’re full of weeds and getting overgrown with grass. I’ll save all the plants I can but I’m not too worried because I’ve got loads of seeds that I’ll be able to sow next year and get the borders filled again 🙂

Going back to the stone pot area, the grass all round it was in a terrible state; it was covered in stones, the part that had held the pile of stones for weeks had gone yellow and we’d got cement/sand/concrete on it.
We had planned to dig it all up and sow some grass seed but Nanny said to turf it so that’s what we did 🙂

While Ant had to go to work, I set about digging up the lawn ready for the turf to be delivered.
Ant took the afternoon off work the following day and we worked together to finish preparing the area then laying the turf.
It looks so lovely now 🙂

After all that work I need a rest so I’m going to relax and take a wander round everyone else’s gardens from one of my favourite linkys, How does your garden grow? 🙂