Gnomelet Blogs :: Currently

Hello wonderfull readers of my mums blog, I am first born (gnomelet). And though I normally just stick to doing the techi work (backgrounds etc) I just thought I would give you a sneaky peak at the rest of the garden and a tiny bit of the japenese garden as it stands now.
I am back home from uni for easter and I really appreciate the garden all the more when I come from the inner city. Thankfully we have had quite a few days recently of non typical english weather, so I snapped these in the sun.


The ladder through the trees goes to the tree house my dad (himself) built.

Poor shaun the sheep has seen better days.

These artfully arranged pebbles go around the edge of the stream. Don't let this picture fool you into thinking they finished the garden though. I zoomed in on the only totally complete section, though when the chief gnome saw this her first thought was that it needed weeding. She will never give up, I can tell you that.

Pond lining begins!

This is Himself having a short break after we'd finished dry lining the pond with sand which had gone through our awesome home made sieve!

The photo also shows the width of the shelf I'd made for plants and rocks. It widens out under the sieve and stays that wide all down the rest of that side.

The square block in the bottom of the pond is one of 4 blocks put in place to rest the tea house legs on - oh yes, my 'little veranda' plan grew a bit (aided and abetted by Himself and our dear friend Pete) and will now have a veranda big enough to need legs!

We had some much bedrock residue that we had to pinch part of the vegetable garden to store it - hence the large pile behind Himself. This did, of course, mean that I couldn't grow quite my usual quantity of veg, but it's only a temporary thing and I will get a fabby Japanese garden and, eventually, my full veg patch back - seems like a reasonable compromise under the circumstances!

Himself just finishing smoothing the shelf sand. You can clearly see the blocks where the tea house legs will go.

The bit of shelf that Himself is kneeling on will become my pebble beach - unlikely as that may seem at this point!

This is me, the Nutty Gnome, finishing off putting the fleece liner in place - an 'interesting' job as as the little tiny pebbles slid down the back and Himself was convinced that every single one of them would cause an enormous hole if it wasn't fished out........!

(I didn't get them all out!)

The wooden stake at the bottom right of the picture was for levels and to denote roughly where the waterfall/ stream would run.

We enlisted our best friends, Jackie and Chris, plus assorted teenage offspring from both families to help us lay the liner - it's amazing what the offer of beer and chillie can do!

The butyl liner was flippin' heavy!

It took 6 of us to carry it up the garden and into the pond.

Heaven only knows what I was trying to explain to Owen - but it obviously worked as the liner got properly laid out in the end!

Part of the 'Liner Team' at work.

You can tell it was early spring due to the lack of runner beans up the poles behind Himself.

Mind you, the blackcurrant bushes and raspberry canes look good!

Explaining 'the plan'

I just thought I'd better try to explain what my plan was/is - and see if you can understand it any better than my family did!

I had it all visualised in my head as the finished product, so my vague pointing and sweeping hand movements across the plot matched my equally vague sweeping statements about "the top pond'll go there, the stream'll come out here then meander down round there to a waterfall into the bottom pond around there-ish. The path will come in that way, but you can come in over there too if it's wet.....and they'll meet there, go past the island over the top bridge and up to the tea house."

Simple. Don't see why they didn't get it!

My basic plan had 2 ponds connected by a stream. Waterfall out of one, down the (yet to be built and properly graded) slope to drop over a waterfall to the bottom pond. An 'island' of several (as yet to be found) large rocks, bounded on one side by the stream and the other side by the path. Two bridges (material of which had yet to be identified) top and bottom of the island would allow the paths to traverse the stream and access the gates and tea house.

The tea house plan included treatment space, a wood burning stove, a couple of small windows and a little veranda (hold the thought of 'little' for future reference!) sticking out of the pond to allow for possible dangling of feet into cool, clear pond.

The photo is one sent to me by a friend as her interpretation of what I'd described!!!

Pond digging has begun....!

This is looking southwards down the garden. I have already dug the rough outline of the pond and begun to tackle the depths! It was quite hard going as there is not much topsoil at this side of the garden, so the sandstone bedrock is only about 18" down. It's also had years of being pushed about by tree roots, bramble etc, so it crumbles into large jaggedy chunks as soon as you look at it - I got through about eleventeen pairs of gardening gloves scraping it all out! I also slept well after 'digging days'!

The circle of stones will one day become my Tai Chi training circle and the small mound of earth by the green trug will become the island - honest!




Am I not the epitome of gardening elegance?!

I am standing in the footings for one of the paths. Himself (my beloved husband, Andy) thought that traffic in my garden would be heavy, so insisted that I dig footings worthy of a motorway - or perhaps he just liked me all hot and sweaty!!!

The hosepipe is the proto-stream in that it shows where I wanted the stream route to end up - which it (more or less) has!

As the digging was such hard going - and jolly boring, I kept switching onto other, more interesting, things hence the reason it all looks 'bitty' at this point. Plus I was still the only one who really understood what I was trying to achieve!

In the begining....

In the begining, when we first moved in to the house, the garden was a fairly tidy but bland place. The previous owners loved all shades of green but, apparently, no other colours! They were elderly and the garden had been pretty much left to its own devices - hence the vast amounts of brambles in all the borders, but especially in this area!

My ideas for the Japanese garden were very clear in my head - but far less clear when I tried to articulate them to my long suffering family. So I initially settled for planting 3 different sorts of bamboo as my lower boundary and left them to get on with some serious growing whilst we tackled the necessary renovations indoors......4 years later, the bamboos were fatter but I was no nearer having my garden.

Having continued to fail to convey my ideas, I decided to just get on with it!
My friend and staunch supporter, Sarah, came to help me clear the area, along with my younger daughter, Laura. Proof of the state of the area before we started was lost when I accidently deleted a load of photos from my husband's camera (- I am not the most technically proficient of people at times!), so you'll just have to believe me about just how bad it was.

Confessions of a novice gardener!

A few years ago, when we moved into our current house, I had the inspired idea (hah!) to create a Japanese garden in one part of our garden. The plan included a small tea house for me to use as my treatment room to provide reiki and reflexology to willing victims!

In my mind, I naively thought that this would take but a few weeks to do - two and a half years later it is still under construction! This is the tale of the progress - and lack of, of the garden!

The plot for the Japanese Garden is about 26' x 45', facing more or less north/south and on a slope. It was covered in spirea, bramble, heather, bramble, privet, bramble, large unkown straggly bushes (spot the knowledge, eh!), more bramble....etc. it took 3 of us 10 woman days to clear it - I really should have known at that point that my simple plan was perhaps not quite so simple after all!

The plot is cleared - except for one particularly stubborn privet tree - had to resort to man power to dig that out. Thanks to my husband,Andy, for that!

My initial pond and tea house plan - the outermost planks are the veranda.

Me hard at work doing the final digging on the top pond.

We enlisted help from the local rabble (our best friends, Jackie and Chris and their assorted offspring) to get the HUGE pond liner in place.

As the pond filled, it quickly attracted wildlife!

The pond as it was early last summer.