Garden Refresh

Over the last couple of years, my back garden has involved a battle against the weeds; a battle which I admit I have been fighting half-heartedly.

When everything is good out there, I enjoy spending time planting stuff and (weather permitting) sitting out there. But once I let it get out of control, it was just depressing. Worst of all, the pointing started to go between the pavers, allowing weeds to take hold. I had a go at fixing this myself, but decided it was a lot of work.

So I got back the guys who did my front garden.

The main job was the patio. They started by pressure washing the whole thing, then ground out all the old pointing. They then replaced that with a permeable resin pointing.

It was only today that I was going back through old posts and realised the patio was first laid in 2011. So 12 years isn’t bad going, and it now looks as good as new.

While here, I also let the guys take care of the weeds. Their remit was easy – apart from the pear tree, get rid of all plants. Iain, the main guy, wasn’t too chuffed about removing the laurel, as he reckoned it. But I have never liked it, and laurel is not particularly dog-friendly when fruiting. So it went.

As of this moment, all the furniture is piled on one side – putting it all back is my job. One of the troughs is past redemption, so I am going to use it to patch the other three, and arrange them close to the conservatory, before refilling and planting. Other planting will be restricted to tubs and containers, to keep future weeding straightforward – “if it comes out of the ground, kill it!”