site preparation

The top of the sloping bed is tantalisingly close to being weeded and cleared for planting, bramble stumps grubbed out and the majority of the sea buckthorn roots extracted.  It is remarkable how it has managed to look as though it is almost clear for several days, while taking hours more work to finish clearing it.  Thinking I must be nearly there, I went to measure the space before ordering shrubs to go in it.  It is a very odd shaped hexagon, and I am still trying to work out how the back can consist of two not quite in-line stretches of 3.3 metres each, when the front is only 3.3 metres in total.  I am fairly sure each individual measurement is right, and the answer must be that it's due to the uphill end of the border being deeper than the downhill one, and the downhill edge not meeting the back and front edges at anything like a right angle.

This morning I stood in the very light drizzle with a handful of bamboo canes, poking them into the ground and trying to check whether there was really room for a Tamarix, a small Buddleja, a Caryopteris and a pale pink Cistus, plus rose 'Sarah van Fleet', or if that would be too many shrubs, or not enough and I would actually need more than one cistus.  I wasn't buying more than one Caryopteris, since they are easy from cuttings.  I was accompanied by Mr Cool who alternated between trying to climb up my leg so as not to have to stand on the wet grass, and chewing the ends off the bamboo canes.  I decided that one each of the shrubs would be enough, and stomped back indoors to order them, unhooking Mr Cool from my knee.  The rose will come from the excellent Trevor White roses once it is the bare root rose season, and I ordered the others from Crocus.  I have used Crocus before and found them utterly professional, as befits a firm that supplies plants to several Chelsea show gardens every year.

By the afternoon the rain had passed and I set off to buy mushroom compost to dig into the soil at the top of the bed, which consists of incredibly thin soil made worse by the addition of left-over builders' sand, on top of an old track.  The mushroom compost had gone up by twenty-five pence per bag since the last time I bought any.  The woman on the till told me briskly that it was still very good value compared to other, bagged composts and she was right, but I would have preferred her to feel my pain.  After all, it isn't bagged.  I had to shovel every last one of the two hundred and forty litres I bought today myself.  At least I know to take my own stainless steel spade.  Life is too short to dig spent mushroom compost with a plastic shovel.

I spread it across the end of the bed, and was dismayed at how far it went, or rather didn't go.  I was evidently going to need another car load, and more probably two.  And I was aghast as I began to fork it into the soil at how quickly it vanished.  I'd spread a good generous layer, but the sand simply ate it.  In fact, I couldn't understand how there was quite so much builders' sand.  How much had our builder had left over?  Based on my recent gravel spreading experience there seemed to be a couple of bulk bags of the stuff, coming up in discouraging off-white seams with every turn of the fork.

I arranged for the Crocus shrubs to be delivered on Saturday, and in my mind's eye by Saturday afternoon, or Sunday morning at the latest, I was going to be arranging them in the freshly cleared and compost laden space, along with quite a few of the plants that have been languishing in pots outside the greenhouse all summer.  By Monday morning it was all going to be done, barring the composted straw mulch that will have to wait until I psych myself up to order another pallet load. I now see that was a complete delusion.  By Sunday afternoon I might just about have managed to bag, cart and incorporate in the border enough organic material to give the new planting at least a vague chance of survival.