This has been a project I've been meaning to do all winter. It's happened over the course of about three weeks, in between work and in the dry days between winter storms.
There's been a self-seeded euphorbia bush at the end of the garden for years now. I've been reluctant to cut it down because the blackbirds like to nest in it, and it gives us good privacy from the neighbours.
But really, it's time for it to go. It makes getting to the shed an interesting exercise in contortionism, the neighbours don't like it, and it grows really fast and no matter how hard we cut it back it just comes back bigger. But the biggest issues are that it makes that end of the garden really dark and gloomy, and also that Chester cat has started to work out how to climb it an use it as an escape route from the garden.
The photo above shows how it started off.
After a couple of hours of attacking it with the loppers and a saw, we trimmed back the branches enough that we could get to the main stem. It was about six inches in diameter, more of a small tree than a bush, and needed to be cut off at ground level with a saw.
Breaking it all down to get rid of it took a couple of weeks, mainly because we filled the garden waste bin twice over, chopping as much as we could into small pieces to make the most of the space.
In the photo above you can see a couple of the dwarf fruit trees we've bought. They are part of our plan to make our garden far, far more productive and reduce the amount of over-priced low quality fruit and veg we have to buy from the supermarket. They are why we need the light !
The picture below shows a wider view of the bush gone. There was a deep layer of leaves underneath which I raked up onto the flowerbed on the left (well, no flowers yet, it's been under the bush for the last few years...)
Beneath the leaves you can just make out the stepping stones I'd laid when we first moved in. They've been living under the layer of mud and leaves, so need cleaning off. Right now, I get told off every time I go down to the end of the garden, for walking mud into the house.
The first job was to shovel away some of the mud to bring the surface down to the level of the stepping stones. That was useful, as it could go into the raised beds which need a good foot of extra earth and compost before we plant anything in them.
After that I could hose down and scrub the stones. Once the weather gets just a little bit warmer I'll plant lots of grass seed, and now there's light at this end of the garden it'll cover the mud up nicely.
The flowerbed to the left is temporarily storage for the old lawnmower and cat house. I'm sure I'll find permanent places for them in due course, because that's where the dwarf fruit trees will go.
While I was at it, I gave the decking a bit of love. It was getting a bit mossy and was slimy and dangerous. A scrape with the shovel and a bit or work in the crevices with a fork made it at least safe to walk on. Once the weather is dry, I'll give it a workover with a brass bristled brush to get rid of the rest of the slime.
So that's the far end of the garden turned from an untidy impassable jungle to an untidy muddy swamp. The garden always looks so scruffy at this time of year. By the end of the year, I'm hoping it might look like a grassy orchard !
All photos by me