Hedge in!!!! - Third time's a charm

Third time's a charm they say and well they might do.
The pond still looks great and all the elves were busy while I was away. Peter Pan has been grinding away at the solar panel brackets - Everyone will be keen to help out just so we stop making so much noise!!!

The site is cleared Yeah!!!!
I know I've said that before but this time it really is.!!!

The glasshouse is unfortunately delayed, partly due to the Amdega triumphant showing at the RHS Royal Chelsea flower show this year. Can't complain when it's that very standard and all those extra features which are causing the delay and with the weather so amazing it's not that it's not eggerly awaited but the delay is softened somewhat.

Hard Digging day!!

Yesterday was a real hard digging day!!
Decided to dig out the foundations of the Glasshouse ready for the floor to go in before the glasshouse arrives.

I've said the glasshouse is arriving next week so many times that no one believes me anymore - but it is really really close now and we need to get the flooring in - drains and dolomite, sand, weed membrane and paving or flagstones - And the big question is should we try and get flagstones and all the benefits that that entails or should we use use small blocks!.

Anyway the plan was to get the pond in!!!
But first we needed to get the ground prepared - the top of the pond has to be level. When you think about it this makes sense. The water will float out to being level and the liner really has to be under water otherwise it will perish in the sunlight. So that means that the sides of the pond all have to be the same height. You may have noticed that the site is in general not that level and the part where the pond is is no more level than the rest of the site.!!!

This meant building up a considerable amount on the lower side. which meant a lot of manual hard landscaping - lucky we'd already decided to dig out around the foundations, which gave us a ready source of soil with which to build up the edges.

And all the stones, sharp bits and anything that might Pierce the lining had to be removed. take out one stone and another three appear.

Check out our facebook page with all the pictures and video of us stomping down the edges of the pond. Not sure how to put a link to the facebook page from here though. maybe send me an email and I'll send you an invite from the page.

LONG TIME NO SEE

Sorry for the long gap in posts.

Life got a bit hectic there for a while, trip to NZ and back followed by our long awaited party, but I seem to be back on track now.

And I’ve a new plan for consistent blogging. I commute twice a week to York for work so I’ve got 43mins morning and evening on the train – I usually work the morning 43 mins but by the time evening comes around I’m too brain dead to do anything in the evening – so as blogging doesn’t take that much energy I’ve decided to use that time to blog.

Saw our resident Robin again the other day – He really is resident. Took three separate tours of the garden on the weekend all with party guests – should have started charging!! The Hawthorn has almost finished flowering. And the new ‘ancient’ hedge seems to have stuck well and has greened up like anything.

Garden progress is amazing the sun has shone and there’s been a bit of heat in it – obviously while I was out of the country J. No I shouldn’t complain at all we had the most amazing weather all last week. I got sunburnt in London – who’d have thought!!! And then blue skies all week and right through until the big birthday BBQ on Saturday thankfully only started raining on Sunday and by then we were all saying how much we needed a bit of rain!!!!

Anyway we’ve had lots of developments. – Peter Pan and the lost boys have been super busy while I was away. And Wendy has put up a whole stack of pictures on our new Facebook page – so everyone can follow our progress in pictorial form!!! I’ll still put a few up here just to spice things up. But you should join up to our facebook site.

We’ve got the fruit trees planted – albeit some of them are still in a temporary spot and some desperately need pruning. BUT they look GREAT!! We even got some weed mat under the fence behind them and a layer of left over dry-stone-wall gravel to hold it down.

We’ve got the soft fruit all planted – albeit all in pots and some of them are too small and Thelma and Louise have already had to repot them. But they all seem to be doing great and have got super leafy since they went in.

Peter Pan and the Lost Boys dug the largest hole imaginable – actually seem to have gone a bit more than a foot below the bedrock!! It really is impressive. I keep saying be careful what you say in front of Peter Pan it just might happen before you’ve had a chance to rethink it. Anyway the hole is now looking super professional – nicely lined with breeze blocks and all topped off with railway sleepers so that unsuspecting intruders don’t fall in – hope they can get the top off to put the water tanks in. Looks like we’ll have a water system going before long. Thanks to the co-op bank for the £1000 towards getting us sustainable water on site – plus BB guys for giving us the blocks at super cheap price.

On top of that we finally got all the stone cleared off the site – I know we love the stone but there was so much stone we couldn’t see the site and I swear there are some pieces of stone that must have been shifted two dozen times!! He site is not quite but almost level.

The big progress though is the POND!!! The pond is now a real hole in the ground – obviously it doesn’t hold water yet. And the large crack in the bedrock is a bit of a worry – given the mining history of the region. But in general it’s all progress and we can really start to see the shape and form of the garden. You can see where the pond is going to go and the shape and depth of it. And we’re already to start smoothing off the rough edges this Saturday – the sun has even come out again!! :) . We’ve got sand, liner, felt and most of the plants already to be assembled.

Other progress. The glasshouse is getting closer and closer to completion and its sibling had a day out at Chelsea which is very cool!! Peter pan and at least one of his lost boys were busy laying out the centre line for the frame along the foundations – not quite as even, level or square as they might have been but still the footprint fits. And there seemed to be a lot of noise and clouds of white dust going up this morning when we went past on the way to the train station – so I think Big J might have been taking to the edges with a skill saw – hopefully the right edges. Sure it’s all fine. Anyway we think it’s about ready to arrive this coming week – I know I’ve said that before but now I really think it’s going to happen.

more progress

just been up to the Garden and the boys have been back and it looks as though the far end of the wall is almost done.

If you know where you are looking you can notice, but only just where each segment starts and ends as we used the thickest stone first... But only if you really know what you are looking for - if you are not intimately aquainted with the wall and you don't know what you're looking for you will just see the most beautiful wall in the world.

The hedge looks very much alive. It's really thick lets hop it grows. and grows fast.

Dry stone walling

20 tonne of stone makes a big pile of stone.

Peter Pan once again did a great job and Dunhouse Natural Stone came through for all the stone at half price.

It's cool stuff though - Dead Friar's stone.

Shifting 20 tonne of and stacking it neatly into a wall takes a bit of effort.

All the misc. things we've done

Sorry. We've been so busy that I've not posted for almost a month.
So I'll go back to where I left off and catch everyone up.

We've finished painting the fence - both fences - east and North - both lovely Green. I voted for the brick red - everyone else on the committee voted for the dark green - Democracy is a wonderful thing and the dark green looks great - needless to say the brick red would have been horrid - too dark and too red.

We've finally got all the paper work done for the CDENT application and we can start work and start drawing done the money as soon as we've found the 10% 3rd party contribution - anyone who has £1480 lying around that they want to contribute just let me know.

The big thing though has been the south wall - But that surely deserves a page to it's self...

The Glasshouse

I got asked today to tell again the story of how we came to have this fantastic glasshouse!! It is the most amazing story. We were sitting round the table having just submitted the first draft of the CDET application for the permanent planting, pond, raised beds and seating and I was running through the wish list and and the only major item left was the glasshouse. Some of the committee may have been on to their second glass of wine and suggested we try AMDEGA. Everyone but me and Peter pan thought this was a great joke - But me (because I had no idea who AMDEGA were) and peter (because he just sees these things as a challenge). "Why not? the worst they can say is no". Anyway we all laughed and the next day peter rang to ask if the company that makes conservatories and sunhouses for royalty and footballers wives would like to donate a glasshouse to our tiny little community garden in the North East. The marketing director laughed and said (and I'm paraphrasing secondhand here) "your timing is amazing! The Managing director just confirmed this morning that we are going to go back to our Victorian roots and start making Greenhouses again and my main job for this morning is to find a site to locate the prototype"

FENCE

I almost can't believe it but it is true the fence is all but done!!! And it looks fabulous!!! We started the fence painting at 11am - quietly confident because the rain today site gave us only a 12% chance of rain - which I then completely jinked - sorry guys the wind was all my fault. We had a good crowd going and I thought it'll be great if we get the whole of the inside done this morning - knowing we had the village litter pick this afternoon so we'd only have the morning. We got almost along to the gate and then knocking off time came so we slowly thinned out for lunch but just as we were leaving over the horizon laden down with provisions arrived reinforcements!!!

We went off for lunch calm in the knowledge that progress was being made even while we munch on salad and smoked mussels! Even took the time to punch down (lightly), reshape and bake the pseudo hot-cross-bun loaf - obviously not true hot cross bun because it's not good Friday - but us heathens are allowed to bend the rules. Anyway I digress we arrived back on the green for 2pm start on the litter pick and with so many willing helpers we decided to divide and conquer so we split into litter pick team and painting team and unbelievably by the time we got back from the cemetry detail of the litterpick the fence was gone and everyone had vanished. The lost boys did well!!

I've put some before lunch photos up. Tomorrow I'll go up in the sunshine and take a few pictures from the outside - it really does look great and green was really the way to go colour wise.



I .

Insurance

YESSSS!! Finally after all the hard work Peter Pan has worked his magic once more and we now have insurance!

Not just for the Community Garden public liability but also for the glasshouse and for just a little extra the National Farmers Union extended the public liability to the other Resident Association activities. So we can paint our fence tomorrow -11am if you're around - and while we are painting we need worry about nothing more than dripping paint and coverage and maybe the weather. The paint pot says not to paint if "rain is imminent" which if this were really true would surely mean fewer painted fences, houses, sheds, gates, anything in this country

And we can go on our litterpick on Saturday - That's tomorrow 2pm!! - without a worry in the world. Hot cross buns for everyone.

Fruit Trees

How exciting!! This is really the best part of gardening - planning the garden - sorting through a 1000 varieties till you find the perfect combination. The only problem is that it's now so late in the season that the selection is reduced and desisions need to be made because everyday the list of what's available gets shorter and shorter. The set list was already in place so there was at least a starting place. For the espalier trees we had decided on:

• a Quince,
• two Pears,
  
• two Plums,
  
• two Cherries,
• One large cooking Apple,
• 4-5 dessert Apples
• and a partidge in a .... no I already said the pear tree
  

The next step was deciding how to choose -
In time honoured tradition I drew up a list of essential and desirable features and then went through the Rodgers online catalouge till I had a short list of a dozen apples rather than a list of 200.
Criteria I used were:
Essential

• Available
• Hardy/Northern
• Not irregular or biennial crops
• No thinning required
• Flavour -some positive mention of flavour in the description - I didn't obviously taste all the apples
• Matching pollination groups

Desirable

• Large cropper
• Holding shape when cooked (culinary apple only)
• Disease resistant
• Some mention of Hertitage or heirloom variety
• Diversity of fruiting types and times
  

The Quince was really the easiest so I started there - plus apparently I am the only one with any opinion on quinces except eehhyukk why.....

But really who can resist the delights of rosy coloured transperant wonder that is quince jelly!
Besides there were only 4 to chose from so I went for the "large crops of high-quality fruit" pear-shaped quince.

Cherries next - cherries were also easy cos I was just going for the sweet cherries and I had two to play with and I wanted to diversify as much as possible so classic Stella "dark red fruit" "flesh juicy" and most importantly "good flavour". Followed by the slightly lighter and "very hardy" Cherokee.




n.b. all pictures are stolen

CDENT SUCCESS

YEAH!!!!!! We got £14 800 for the Garden!!

CDENT (otherwise known as the County Durham Environmental Trust) sent me an email yesterday afternoon informing me that our application had been successful in everyhting except the large specimen apple tree. Which means that we can really start thinking about what plants we want in the garden now and hopefully stop thinking about where we are going to get money from!!

Have been so busy the last couple of weeks I haven't written anything but we have been making steady progress - we've been painting the east fence last weekend and the weekend before and it's now almost painted front and back. I was away last weekend but peter pan and helpers carried on and made even better progress without me :)

I've put in a few pictures of us in motion but this was almost two weeks ago now - if you look carefully you can see the foundations are still just a trench - a very level, even trench nicely pegged out and very very square trench but a trench none the less. A trench which is now a beautifully laid concrete foundation complete with small time capsule in the SE corner.


We've sent a flyer round the village inviting anyone who wants to come join us painting to turn up this weekend at the Community Garden at 11am with old clothes and a friendly smile. - See you there!!

Foundations

Foundations - foundations.

Big J spent all morning yesterday levelling the site for the greenhouse. But only where the greenhouse is going as we can't touch the rest of the site till we hear back about our funding application - we only managed to get the reply letter in yesterday - So I expect it will be a couple of days yet.

Anyway site levelled we did the first pegging out for the foundations and I started to think how big the greenhouse looked - can't say that too loud though - but not to worry as Big J spent the rest of the day digging the trench and when I went up after work last night I couldn't help thinking how small the greenhouse looked!! - It's all an optical illusion!! Nothing you see with your eyes is worth worrying about the bottom line is the greenhouse takes up 31 square meters and the plot is 360 square meters and the area of the greenhouse doesn't change depending on whether it's marked out by a trench or by a thin string - although it should be said that the foundations are a bit bigger than the actual greenhouse so that the greenhouse can sit on it.

Once the trench was dug - The Jays were busy again remeasuring the sides and the checking the angles were all square - which they were - ALMOST!! Poor Jays back to the start. But it's all straight now and square and all the sides all match up and tomorrow morning before 8 the concrete is arriving ready to pour, ready to set and then we'll be ready for the glasshouse when ever it arrives.

T-1

Last night we had the committee meeting of our residents association. Lots of discussion about things other than the garden - not sure how or why but apparently some people don't spend their lives thinking about the community garden!! Shocking.

Although, clearly there was also lots of discussion about the community garden and the progress we've made so far and what we intend to do next and also lots of devil's advocate, checking that we still had our skates on and weren't getting carried away. Still a few big things to sort out but mostly we've got a plan and the first step is always to have a plan. Can't move on to plan B unless you've got a plan A. You can tell I'm an 80's chick because I tend to say things like "I love it when a plan comes together". Which means I tend to make lots of plans so I get the chance to say "I love it when a plan comes together!".

But I think my point is that this plan seems to be coming togther and.....
tomorrow we should start....
...
...
wait for it ...
...
...
laying the foundations for the glasshouse.


Even the earth (little E) has warmed up so the concrete hopefully will set ok.

Not sure if it is just because it suddenly feels like spring - what with the blue skys, sun and crocuses but things seem to be moving along at quite a snappy little pace.

Of course foundations don't just appear out of no where. Foundations require, planning, thinking, discussion, something that they are going to be the foundation of and someone to build them and someone to pay for them. ohhh makes my head hurt thinking about it. can't believe it's happening so fast.

Anyway Tomorrow big day.
Tomorrow we start the preparation for the glasshouse. THE FOUNDATIONS!!

Luckily the glasshouse wasn't part of the CDET (County Durham Environment Trust) application. The CDET application is the big application one it's the one that will allow us to actually buy the plants and really although the other things are nice it must be said that a garden without plants isn't really a garden (no offense James). So the CDET application. We have put in for money to pay for the wildlife area (which mainly means the pond but also the plants around the pond), permanent planting (which mainly means the fruit trees but also the flowers), hard landscaping (trellises and raised beds things for plants to grow in or up) and the seating (you'd think this was self explanatory but actually it mainly means tables - but with seats attached).

I say luckily because the thing I learnt today which is very very important is that if someone says they are going to give you money - even if they say they really almost definately absolutely are going to give you the money - and even if they really mean it when they say that - and even if the weather looks like it's time you ought to be thinking about using the money to buy the trees so they can get planted when they ought to get planted - well even then you still can't start spending the money until they actually give it to you. AND what's more you actually can't even start doing any of the things that you asked for the money for even if you're only doing them becasue they said they'd give you the money and you figure you can just buy the trees now and pay for them when you get the money. Well the thing is you can't! And if you do they willthink you didn't really need the money and then they won't give it to you. Even if before they were going to. SO LUCKY we didn't. :)

05.march.2010
View from the monument looking across the exisiting Hawthorn and along the village green. Note the Blue sky!!

View across the front of the outside of the garden. This is the new fence that the Parish Council got us.

The fourth wall

Progress on the fourth wall today!!

When we began the South wall was the only one standing. So like painting a house we began with the wall in worst repair and moved on from there. The south wall looked much better back when everything else was falling down. But to be fair the freezing weather has wrecked havoc - with one large section giving way completely.
But today we are moving forth on the fourth wall we met with the man as they say and we are not only going to get our wall fixed sometime in March but we are going to be taught how to do drystone walling and get a certificate to say we have a basic knowledge of drystone walling. All we need to do is come up with 10 volunteers and we are good to go. So hopefully the wall and the glasshouse will go up together. I should give a great anticipatory thanks to the 12 villages group that are planning to teach us.

Glasshouse plans

GOT the final final plans for the glasshouse today! and it is gorgeous!! All cedar wood cladding and sparkling glass and the little shed attached to the north end looks just like a swiss chalet. Of course it's still technically just ink and paper - but the plans have gone to the factory so some of it at least might already be actually in existence. I can't wait!!. I can already see the boxes of flowers under the little windows at the front of the shed. I can already imagine myself standing at the potting bench with the last rays of the warm late afternoon sun streaming in through the windows. I can imagine the view across the raised beds, our newly repaired stone wall across to the lambs in the field across the road.

And the best thing is that today is the second bright sunny - blue sky day in a row. The crocuses are up in my front lawn and it feels like spring is on it's way.

I should explain the glasshouse (or green house) is being made for us by AMDEGA as the prototype of their new range of green/glasshouses.

Raised Beds - the question

Raised beds: leaving aside the subtle questions of dimensions and the complicated analysis of what goes where and assuming we have already decided the benefits of raised beds outweigh the cons the only thing left to decide is material. That is what should the raised beds be made of. Now in theory raised beds can be made of almost anything you like - some things being more practical than others - I suspect lego beds wouldn't stand the internal stress (but then James May's house of lego worked, at least in the short term).

Our raised beds are obviously intended to go in the community garden. Our motto is "form follows function" so they need to be functional, that means hardwearing, durable, non-toxic, longlasting but part of the function of the garden is to look nice and be a nice place to sit so the raised beds can't detract from this by being extremely ugly either. This rules out some of the obviously cheap but rather ugly building materials.

We had decided on railway sleepers - not the recyled/reclaimed type which are generally filled with creosote residue and pretty toxic - but the nice new sort, freshly made untreated but still looking for all intents and purposes like the railway sleepers of yore. However if you start piling these up to get some height into your raised beds, as we intend to do they start to get pretty pricey. Effectively a 1m high raised bed is the same amount of raised bed building materials as four 25cm raised beds and four times the price. - So inexpensive needs to be added to our list of requirements.

This is what the site looked like before we decided to take some positive action!!
Actually at various stages it looked even worse.

Removing the rubbish didn't seem to be enough to stop the habitat so we decided to make it a positive space instead.

We are now seven months and one week into our community garden project and we are well and truly ready to start gardening!!! The weather seems to be warming - well it did and then it snowed again!






Clearing the site was necessary to remove the potentially toxic chemicals donated by the fly-tipping and burning. Removing the first foot and a bit of soil meant a temporary dip in the biodiversity of the site - a thing we hope to rectify in the near future (if you're the now homeless field mouse we're sorry and we hope your new accommodations are working out for you).

We've made lots of progress we've cleared the site (thanks Frank); we've fixed the western boundary stone wall (Thanks Premier Waste, Thompson's and Harle's); we've had the northern wall erected (thanks Parish Council); we've had the eastern fence erected (thanks Frank and Premier Waste) - but so far the site still has no plants on it expect the one remaining hawthorn tree from the ancient hedge line standing sentinel in the north west corner of the plot becrowned with sparrows and dunnocks.

An introduction

Welcome to my Blog.
I recently ran into GrrlScientist and she insisted that a blog is a good thing. Plus this will allow everyone to keep up to date on how our Community Garden is going even if I don't happen to catch them.

The big news is that we have all the plans for the glasshouse (greenhouse) finalised and the plans are off to the factory tomorrow to be made into our very own perfectly formed palace of glass.