Garden News

[callmemadam]

At last the tree surgeons turned up today to give the garden its annual haircut. I usually book in August and get them Christmas Eve but this broke all records. Luckily they picked what seemed like the first dry, sunny day for weeks but oh! that wind! Anyway, we are now trim. I had to warn them to be careful of our wall. It seems that after all the wall is dangerous and might fall over. Not because it's old, not because the foundations were inadequate, nor because of the clay soil. The reason for its fragility, dear readers, is that when the blankety builders put up the new houses they dug away on that side of the wall, so reducing the foundations. Our builder wants to take it down and rebuild using lime mortar. We haven't had a quote but it's highly unlikely we can afford that and we'll probably have to have a horrid fence like everyone else (oh, what a giveaway). Ever since The Secret Garden became my favourite book as a child, my ideal has been a garden with a wall round it. Heigh ho.

Comments

[debodacious.livejournal.com]

I adore walled gardens too - I yearn for a walled kitchen garden more than anything else in the horticultural world. (Especially today - the only things which grow entirely successfully in my garden here are cordyline and phormium type things, and following a night of gales the biggest one and the very lovely pot it lived in are in bits on the beach).

Is there no possibility of underpinning the existing wall. Or alternatives to an expensive builder (my pa walled his own garden, having discovered his inner Churchill - it took yonks but he loved doing it). Or instead of a fence might a hedge be possible?

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Underpinning has already been ruled out. It would be a shame to have an old wall badly rebuilt: we do trust our builder although he is expensive. A hedge would be nicer than a fence, although both would need maintenance, which a wall wouldn't. The new neighbours, a nice young family, have little children so safety is paramount.

There are some lovely walled gardens round here. One large garden in Wimborne has a 'crinkle crankle' wall in the vegetable garden: lovely. There are beautiful old walls at Cranborne Manor, too. We're not in that league, of course.

I expect your gales are worse than ours but I am cowering in here. The noise! My sister said I would need a safety harness on in Scotland at the moment to stop me blowing away.

[debodacious.livejournal.com]

It has been pretty wild here, and we had no power from lunch time until about 5 o'clock this evening. But I think everywhere is suffering today.