Making a field into a garden with no money is turning out to be much harder than we expected. We've been here four years now and in the ornamental garden have so far just planted half a dozen random shrubs and replaced the home-made cobble paths (cobbles dug from the veg garden) with ghastly but practical concrete slabs. My attempt at a flight of steps up the bank have also been replaced by those slabs, but nicely faced with timber from the forest or flat slabs of boulder. Where native trees (birch, ash, willow) have established themselves in sensible places like tops of banks they have been encouraged.
Any spare money has to date just been ploughed back into improving the soil in the productive garden but this year we have gone mad and so far spent a few hundred Euro on bare rooted shrubs and perennials.
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| Thirty odd bare rooted shrubs and hedging plants in the buckets and the same again of perennials potted up, with another dozen shrubs in pots. That is going to be a lot of watering if we have a hot summer! |
