| 2nd December 2009 |
2009 Review |
|
The end of our only ‘big tree’
I have, perhaps, a strange definition of what makes a ‘big tree’, but
this is it:
It is a tree which when I stand against and hug it, my finger tips don’t
meet. Interestingly the length between my fingertips with arms stretched out
is 75 inches, exceeding my height by a couple of inches. I always understood
that in most people the two are closer to the same. Maybe I’m closer to my
ape ancestors!
 Anyway if you’ve stuck with this tale so far I will
recount the disaster. On an otherwise unremarkable day, July 7th
2009, our largest girthed tree, a forty odd year old golden weeping willow,
folded to the horizontal at about five or so feet from the ground. The
weather was unexceptional with a moderate Easterly breeze, and we thought
the tree had been in very good health. It had however gone up a very long
way, some 60ft, I guess. The trunk was far from vertical and on removing it
after the event had some rot on the lower side of perhaps ten percent.. It
would seem the combination of a good growing season, producing a mass of new
growth with foliage, high up in the air, the leaning of the less than
perfectly sound trunk, and a slightly unusual wind direction combined to
cause it to fail. It had a circumference probably a foot greater than my 75
inch big tree specification, where it shattered.
 We knew nothing of the incident until one of our eight neighbours asked,
were we aware one of our trees had fallen in his garden. At this point we
expected a somewhat less significant specimen had fallen. He had the top
twenty feet or so, which just reached his lean-to greenhouse, breaking one
pane of glass only. It did some damage in our garden principally to the
shed, but no other tree or shrub was totally smashed. A couple of old
Rhododendrons were reduced by 75% but I’m pretty confident they will grow
back over time, Many plants including our much loved Embothrium coccineum
were damaged by about 10 to 25%.
We started the clear up in his garden where there was
no material much in excess of six inches in diameter. The brushwood took us
a week of our spare time to cut up and shred. Much of the trunk remains to
be carted away, but the root has been ground out by an extremely helpful
local tree surgeon, Matthew
Prince.
The site where it fell may be suitable for some of my
growing collection of Borinda bamboos.
 The new ‘Summer & Autumn
Garden’
The first major stage or upper terraced area of our new ‘summer and
autumn’ garden was presentable by early June 2009. The mixed border on the
left looking from the arbour astounded us with its sustained flower power.
We don’t have a huge amount of experience with sun loving perennials.
Being me I had amassed far more plants than the area should have comfortably
held, so they were planted a little close together than recommended.
However, many of them far exceeded our expectations, on their capacity to
grow. The extreme example was Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’, which had been a
half inch diameter dead stick in a three litre pot when we planted it in the
spring. By late summer is was nearly six feet high with perhaps ten stems
some as thick as my thumb, and covered in hundreds of flowers. We were
hugely impressed but it was too vigorous for the place we put it as it was
spoiling a group of Kniphofias and
Crocosmias. We have dug it up and will
put a piece back somewhere else in due course.
 The new ‘Water Lily Pond’
The new pond filled successfully with just rainwater by the spring, at which
time it was discovered by the local wildlife. We had a good amount of
frogspawn which to our great delight hatched successfully. Our other ponds
have not been any good for hatching spawn for many years, the reasons for
which have been a mystery to us.
We assume the factors to be too much shade, possibly
bacterial disease and predation by various species of newts and dragonfly
larvae. We have kept a few frogs going by raising the tadpoles in plastic
water tanks feeding them on cold water flake fish food.
This time in the new pond, free of any predators apart
from seven small fish, no build up of disease, and a reasonable amount of
sunlight, almost every ball of spawn hatched, producing thousands of
tadpoles. As there were so many we did feed them with flake, which may have
eventually lead to some blanket weed. However, due to the tons of soil in
the pond and not using tap water, we more or less avoided ‘the new pond
syndrome’, a pea soup effect caused by free swimming green algae.
 Our good friend James of
Wayside Aquatics, against his
better judgement, gave us eight different, small, bare root water lilies,
plus a Lotus plant. These were mostly more modern American varieties,
several of which hold their flowers well above the water surface. He
thought, and was no doubt correct, that four water lilies would be plenty,
if we wanted any visible water surface to remain. After what seemed at the
time to be a slow start, all of them established well and every variety
produced at least one flower, some many.
 We put seven small, but somewhat ancient, Golden Rudd
into the new pond in the spring and during the summer hundreds of tiny fry
appeared. They are painfully slow growing, and the majority are still under
an inch at the time of writing.
I can see they are a poor commercial proposition
because of this, and therefore are seldom available in the trade. James
reckons he’s never offered Golden Rudd, which are gold. My original adults
and even the tiny fry have been frequently misidentified as small Golden
Orfe by visitors.
2009 Visitors
We didn’t have many visitors this year as we had not organised any set
open days. We had two coach parties and the local NCCPG group and the
Crouch
Valley Koi Club who came in their own cars. They all made us feel proud by
really praising our recent efforts.
Next Year
 Due to some major work required in several of the oldest areas of the
garden, we feel we may not have scheduled open days next Spring, but we hope
to welcome visitors again some time in the not too distant future.
We hope to complete the small 2nd terrace of the new garden,
incorporating a small rock garden. We’re looking forward to seeing how all
of our new plants perform next year, following their impressive first year
display.
| 28th November 2008 |
2008 Review |
|
This season we only opened
to visitors during March, April and May. We had very bad luck with the
weather on many of the open days. On two we had quite heavy snow resulting
in nobody coming on those days. In addition there were several quite rainy
days with only a half a dozen or so visitors.
However the plan of not opening during the summer did allow us to proceed
quite well with the new garden development.
 We started the works by creating a raised bed to dispose of some of the
excavated material from the proposed water lily pond. The bed was built
using ‘new sleepers’ capped with a 150 x 50mm treated timber,
Incorporated in the centre of the bed is an Arbour seat for viewing down the
garden over the water lily pond
The bed has been planted with over 60 different Heuchera cultivars, 5 x
Heucherella, 5 Tiarella, and a dozen different Japanese Maples. In addition
two scented climbing roses and Solanum jasminoides ‘Album Variegatum’
have been planted to climb over the arbour. The result in mid summer was a
bit like an instant Chelsea 
Flower Show exhibit as the plants are planted
close together to reduce weed problems. We have grouped similar looking
varieties of Heuchera etc. together to give a subtle drifting effect and to
prevent a too spotty result. The more vigorous of the maples will need
pruning in due course, to prevent them becoming too large.
The pond has gradually taken shape and now is slowly filling with water as
it rains. We are going to be patient and not use tap water in the hopes we
may not get too much of the ‘new pond syndrome’ with green water and
blanket weed.
The pond is deliberately shallow for water lilies at around 30 inches (75cm)
with most of the bottom covered with 9 inches (22 cm) or so of soil. There
are ‘L’ shaped marginal plant beds in the corners and a circular bed in
the centre for a Lotus plant (Nelumbo cv).
The basic pond construction is 4 inch thick dense concrete block-work, a 6
inch reinforced concrete bottom, a scratch coat and a top coat of render on
the sides, and a screed layer of sharp sand and cement mix 
over the bottom.
The render layers and the bottom screed had waterproofing liquid and
‘Reinfibres’ added for water proofing and strength. More concrete blocks
were laid for the beds in a day by a local builder, with Linda and I doing
the mortar mixing etc. Next we painted 
everything with two coats of black
‘A1 Pond Paint’, a two part, water based, epoxy resin paint, which was
very easy to mix and apply. We are waiting with interest to see how it
performs in the long term.
To finish off the top of the outside walls we had rather expensive black
engineering bricks with a round corner laid by a professional hard
landscaper. I scored these on the underside with a diamond stone cutting
disc in an angle grinder for maximum adhesion as we hope to bring the water
level up to the beginning of the curve. The bricks and mortar were also
painted with A1 pond paint, this time clear.
We over estimated how much soil was going to be over
after completion of the pond to level off the garden around it. We will
therefore have to buy in soil later when the retaining walls have been
constructed, again out of timber, to match the new raised bed.
On the left hand side of the pond as
you look down the garden, we have left a yard or so to be grassed in due
course and recently planted up the remaining area back to the boundary
hedge. We have planted a mixture of shrubs for autumn colour, spring, summer
and autumn bulbs, and perennials for summer and autumn flowers.
We are hoping to build retaining walls, steps and paths to finish enough of
the new garden in time to open to visitors in the spring. It will be hard as
there is a good deal of work to be done.
The original garden hasn’t received as much attention as in most previous
years, due to the time spent on developing the new piece, but we have done
our best.
Our current task is to gradually dismantle a large Mimosa tree (Acacia
dealbata) which suddenly died after flowering in the early spring. It has
been a challenge as it must have been close to 40 feet (12m) tall and was
over our large greenhouse. We don’t know why it should have died, but we
noticed a bit off die back at the top during last summer. However as we say,
every plant death in the garden usually means a planting opportunity!
| 26th January 2008 |
2007 Review |
|
We persevered with garden open days
during 2007, again barely breaking even due to poor visitor numbers, as in
recent, previous years. However the great enthusiasm and appreciation of the
visitors we did have has encouraged us to open again in 2008.
 The exciting news of the year was
the purchase of the bottom of our left hand neighbour’s garden, a plot
approximately 33ft by 90ft. Much of our original garden has now become a
woodland garden, with many of the earlier planted trees now approaching
forty years old. Due to the increasing shade it has become more of a spring
garden than any other season. With this in mind we have decided to open the
garden as normal in the spring, but to possibly close for the summer months
to work on the new plot. We will be happy to open the garden by appointment
to groups of six or more though.
 The idea with the new piece which
has a fairly open aspect will be to keep it that way, and concentrate on
summer flowering plants in particular.
There is an existing small vegetable
garden, which will be kept and hopefully utilised fully. A new 10’ x 8’
shed has been erected, where our neighbour’s smaller shed had been.
Guttering has been fitted on both back and front halves of the roof. Each
drains into a water butt. The taps from these are joined by a flexible pipe,
in the centre of which is a T joiner with another pipe leading to a plastic
loft tank with a ball cock.
 This will be a very convenient
dip-tank for can watering, especially for plants which prefer rain water. We
have already planted five varieties of Blueberry on the vegetable plot in
front of the shed, which will benefit from rain water irrigation in dry
weather.
We hope eventually to have a
reasonable sized water lily pond. This will take us a while to create, due
to the problems of disposing of the diggings. The levels of all the
surrounding area will have to be raised and levelled, as it is impractical
to remove excavated soil outside the new garden.
We hope to see you this spring.
| 26th February 2006 |
2005 Review |
|
A garden which is full up and has been for some years gives little scope for new projects and only major plant deaths or planned removals give scope for significant new plantings or the installation of new paths or artefacts.
There were a couple of significant plant deaths, the Edgeworthia chrysantha ‘Red Form’ and the Arbutus x andrachnoides, but neither left a planting space of any significance. However we did decide to remove our Abies koreana which had become less attractive with size and the removal of its lower branches, to keep paths open. This did give us a square yard or two for the planting of some new numbered only species of Chinese Epimedium. We hope some of them may flower this spring, which will be exciting.
We decided to mark 30 happy years of marriage as we did at 25, with a piece of granite statuary. Early in the year we had been admiring a rather expensive and impressive, multi tiered stone pagoda in our local koi dealers, Koi Logic. We couldn’t really find a justification for a quite significant outlay, until we thought of our impending 30th wedding anniversary. We negotiated a saving by transporting it home ourselves and a couple of journeys and strained backs later, it was home and resplendent in our ‘oriental flavoured garden’.
Visitor numbers were low again but we were able to recoup our costs. We are opening again this year, but if we fail to reach that target it will be the last year.
Koi Pond report Early 2006.
Last autumn before we were able to cover the pond with the polythene sheet we needed to make new stressed arch supports. The previous ones constructed of our own home grown Chusquea bamboo had finally become unserviceable, as the humid conditions under the polythene and outdoor storage for the rest of the year had caused them to rot. We used plastic waste pipe, from the local plumbing shop, and wires, to make excellent new support arches for the cover.
Our koi pond of probably less than 2500 gallons is grossly overstocked with around 60 fish, some of are over 18 inches long. We find it hard to part with our fishy pets, although over the years a few have gone into our koi club’s (Crouch Valley) excellent koi auction.
Worrying about a fairly regular need to add medication to the pond for parasite infections, made us decide to make a considerable investment in a protein skimmer and ozone system this winter. This has been installed and running for only a few weeks, but the yellowing and cloudy ness of the water has been reduced dramatically.
I fully expect the growth rate of the fish to now accelerate and create new environmental pressures on the system, but for the moment at least it looks very promising.
We have also recently purchased and installed an inexpensive automatic feeder to do midday and afternoon feeds for us. This leaves an early morning, and sometime after the clocks change, an evening feed for us to do, when we can inspect and enjoy the koi.. It may even make it possible for us to get a few days away, without needing to ask our neighbours and children to feed the koi. We have only had about ten nights away from home in our nearly 31 year marriage. On the first night after programming it with the two feeds we did manage to miss a spurious midnight on with no off in the programming. This resulted in a massive pellet slick in the morning, to be netted out, and a lowering in the redox potential of the water. The system recovered after a few days, with no apparent harm to the fish. The water was cold at the time at about 13.5°C, or things might have been worse.
Old News
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