The garden from scratch

Today I finished digging out the eye bed and started digging out the holly bed. 
    This is the eye bed. It will be more eye shaped when the rocks are in place. It’s kinda merging with the path as well at the moment. As it’s difficult to judge sizes from a photo. It’s 4.5m x 1.7m (at widest point) (14.8ft x 5.6ft). I’ve lost count of how many barrow loads Bob has emptied today      . Even the neighbour stopped on his way past and emptied it for me. While Bob was walking the dogs. I don’t like the motorised barrow. It’s got no steering. You have to physically push it left or right. It’s too heavy for me.

This is just a few photos to remind myself what the garden looked like and how it changed though July

                     

You are giving yourself some major strimming work around those stone surrounded beds unless of course,you are infilling the paths with gravel? Looks nice though!

You are giving yourself some major strimming work around those stone surrounded beds unless of course,you are infilling the paths with gravel? Looks nice though!

It will be all gravel. No grass anywhere near the cottage garden or veg garden

Another job that really needed doing is done. The pot waiting room is now weed free and organised. Mostly, a little more pot shuffling needed and quite a lot of pruning still to do. Oh and 2 more big tubs / fish boxes to move. They’ve grown in. So need Bob’s help to move them.
Before     

After           

Massive improvement, SC. Great idea to use pallets and tarps like that as you're killing off the grass beneath whilst still growing in pots on top. You've given me an idea that I may have to pinch.

Massive improvement SC, it looks like a commercial nursery. You can ramble round and admire your plants and fantasise where they'll eventually go.

Massive improvement SC, it looks like a commercial nursery.  You can ramble round and admire your plants and fantasise where they'll eventually go.

Most of the plants have already been allocated a final location. Each pallet is labelled with the bed they’re going to. Just 2 pallets of plants are to be moved onto other pallets. So I can walk round and visualise what the final bed will look like and I can see how many more plants I need. Unfortunately it’s quite a lot!

You're SO organised!! You can always sow quick growing annuals to fill up the gaps until you acquire your dream plants.

My bulk bag of seed balls arrived today. Which spurred on some serious enthusiasm from Bob. Who set about removing big swaths of grass and rushes and hopefully some bracken from the wildflower area. Don’t be to impress. He cheated      . He was under supervision. He had to avoid patches where things had established or started to grow. When he’d finished I removed big stones and clumps of loose grass that had been left behind. Gave it all a rake over.
 Tomorrow there’s a few small patches I want to dig out by hand. Then I’ll see what other wildflower seeds I have and go scattering. 

Hopefully doing this rather harsh bit of weeding will give the flower seeds a fighting chance. I scattered lots of seeds last year ( about 30 packs, granted not all were the freshest seeds) and very few managed to fight off the grass. So drastic action needed to be taken. 

The varieties in the seedball mix.
Forget-me-not
Cornflower
Meadow cranesbill 
Wild clary
Selfheal
Common poppy
Corn marigold 
Great knapweed 
Sheep’s sorrel
Tufted vetch
Wild carrot
Common knapweed 
Cow parsley 
Field scabious 
Foxglove 
Great burnet
Yarrow
Red campion
Purple loosestrife 
Musk mallow

Plus the few packets of seeds I’ll mix with compost and scatter at the same time. If that lot grow. They should put on a banquet for wildlife, look pretty impressive and put up a good fight against the remaining grass, hopefully.