The Front Garden

Preparation

Back in September we decided we should get the front garden underway so that we could get the hedges we had planned in before the spring. This would give them as much time to grow as possible. As the entire space was covered in gravel, the first step was to get all of this out the way.

We piled all the gravel up as best we could, demolished the little tiny wall between the two sections, and put the gravel up on freecycle. A very nice man came and carted it all away over the course of a week.

Next we dug an exploratory hole to find out how deep the concrete slab was along the edge of the property. It was about a foot in the end. We needed to know because our preference for our new fence would be to inset it into this slab to save as much space as possible. We then widened this into a full trench.

Oh yes, and I demolished the wall.

Setting the Fence Posts

George also assisted with finishing the trench, and then the following weekend also provided much needed knowledge and assistance in setting the fence posts. We had to hire some equipment to do this, as holes needed digging in the concrete to get them in.

We all had a go with the drill, but it was extremely heavy and George was far, far better at it than us. I did have a go with the saw, but to roughly quote George “I’d like you to have more of a go, but we also need to finish this today”, so most of that was done by him.

We used the hose to keep the dust down as it kicked up a lot of mess. The drill was less messy, but hard to control. The holes came out pretty ragged, as we were working in some tight spaces at the ends, and the saw couldn’t get in deep enough to cleanly slice the sections out.

When we were finally done we used slabs to close up the back of the holes and packed clay in around them to hold in the cement and water. Then we squared up the posts as best we could with some string and a level, packed the bottom with rubble, and poured in the postcrete.

We couldn’t have done it without George, and we were extremely thankful for his help.

The Fence Panels

The fences were still yet to arrive, but when they did a few days later, we got to painting them first.

We think they came out really well! We set about finding some tops for the posts online, and then when they arrived we chopped the posts down to size and attached them.

The path of Least Resistance

Finally, we decided it would be a good idea to tidy up the “path”, which at this point was essentially stepping stones. We thought the postman might be grateful.

Yes, they are just set on the clay, and yes we will do this properly with new slabs in the future, but for now, this will do!

Hedging our bets

Next was the hedge! It was November by now, and the bare root plants were available to ship about 2/3 of the way through the month. So we had a discussion about the varieties we wanted, placed an order, and received planting assistance from my parents (by coincidence, it just happened to be the same weekend. We were extremely grateful for the help).

It was a busy day and we had around 60 plants to get in the ground, so there wasn’t a lot of time for photos. They went in with plenty of “blood, fish and bone” mix to get them started, and we had enough plants in the end to go all the way along the front and halfway down either side, so that should look really good.

It was a very cold day and we were all glad to be done. Fast forward to today and they’re all starting to sprout little green leaves! They still look like pathetic little sticks though, unfortunately. Give them time.