As part of the initial walk around the garden, I came across a concrete slab held down by a large stone. Checking this area out, it was apparent that a large stone wall led off to the right of it (you can see the end of it in the picture above).
Having limited experience of “serious” gardening you wonder about cutting something back but exploring the overgrowth, their was a lot of dead branches so I thought I had little to lose by cutting in back. That way I could both inspect the wall and plan it as a feature in the garden as well as allowing fresh growth to establish itself over the next few years.
Coming to the house with no gardening tools, a trip to B&Q and an online shop with Amazon kitted me out with a good set of starter tools and soon I was ready to attack the wall with a sturdy set of secateurs and a jab saw.
The weather this weekend was set to be cold on Saturday but my logic was I may as well be cold in the garden doing stuff, than cold in the house! Plus being sat behind a desk all week, its good to get out at the weekend so armed with my tools, a warm hat, gloves and a pair of strong boots, I set about cutting it back.
Its quite surprising how long it took, as I had to systematically trim back the smaller branches to get to the thicker older structure but in the end I think it looks much better.
What was interesting during this exercise was what was found at the base of the wall, namely a number of cut pieces of drain pipe. These were about 4 inch in diameter and around 18 inches long with a number of them pushed into a couple of brick spaces at the base of the wall. I can only assume that a natural habitat had been created for wildlife but having had a problem with rats in a previous house I wanted to keep an eye on the garden before encouraging wildlife! I suspect due to the rural nature and no regular food present (such as duck food as in my previous garden) it is more likely to be field mice than rats and maybe next year I will get my garden night camera back out and see whats going on out there.
The next challenge will be dealing with the garden waste. I have a number of options. The first is to use it as the start of a compost heap. I have never started one from a heap before so am reading up on that. Obviously the next option will be to bag it up and take it to the tip in the garden waste section. Not a problem I have the Landrover as my workhorse and the tip is 10 minutes away but the other option is just to cut it up, bag it and put it in the workshop to use as kindling for when the log burner is fitted.
Once that was all done, all what was left was to give the other part of the garden a good rake over with the new leaf rake to leave it looking a bit tidier, ready for when the weather gets a bit more mild.
I’m hoping to spend a few hours out there next weekend, at present the forecast says 11 deg with a 20% chance of showers.