So where to start. That was the question which greeted us at the beginning. Well obviously the first thing you should do is a thorough survey of the site. We drew a plan of the positions of various features when we moved in and had a fairly rudimentary look at the soil. The plan looked something like this:
The soil survey (ahem) showed us that the soil was a stony clay-loam with a fairly high pH, very rich in nutrients and exceptionally rich in old bikes, rusty bits of metal, ash, old bones and lots and lots of other crap. Shifting this would take quite a long time. But first we had to get at it. While we planned our assault over the winter we laid down sheets of heavy duty recycled plastic to kill off the weeds. Then we sat and dreamed up a design. We set some design aims including:
- a dry, calcareous meadow with the usual mix of Knapweed, Scabious, Cowslips, ladies bedstraw and other chalk grassland species.
- a 'wet' grassland with damp loving species such as Ragged Robin, Purple Loosestrife, Cuckoo Flower etc.
- a pond with a variety of native species, including Flowering Rush, Marsh Marigold, Lesser Spearwort, rushes and sedges, as well as the obligatory water lily (Nicole insisted on this, wisely I have to say).
- a rockery beside the pond with ferns and other species in the north facing crevices.
- Recycled plastic edging boards, a gravel path for easy access and recycled plastic raised beds. Also a recycled plastic dipping platform to allow the pond to be enjoyed.
- A "cornfield annuals" area.
On the basis of these objectives and the survey we drew up a plan. It looked a bit liked this:
I was going to make a tarted up Illustrator version with pretty colours and a generally professional look but then, I'm not a professional, and this is the crumpled bit of paper we worked from so I guess it's a bit more 'authentic'. We also worked out a plan of action, having decided what was going where:
- First we had to get rid of the rampant bindweed, couch grass and other aggresive weeds which threatened to overwhelm the whole garden. This would involve stripping off the turf, then digging over the soil to try to get out all the bindweed roots.
- Then we had to lower the fertility of the soil to help the delicate wildflowers we would be sowing, which we would achieve by:
- stripping off the topsoil. This was to be done by digging it out till we reached the subsoil, seiving every spadefull and putting the topsoil to one side, so that it could be used elsewhere such as in the vegetable beds and renovating the lawn. The sieving was needed to take out not only the weed roots, but also the stones, broken glass, toy soldiers etc.
- mixing in low fertility material derived by mixing crushed concrete from the path which was being removed, 20mm limestone ballast and the subsoil. In the wet meadow we would just use the subsoil.
- Using recycled plastic edged paths to define the structure of the meadow, we would then line it with a weed suppressing fabric and then fill it with the mixed up subsoil and limestone/crushed conctrete mix.
- The wet meadow would be lined with a pond liner to a depth of 600mm. The pond was to be sited in a position that was higher than either meadow, allowing overflow water from the pond in winter to flood the wet meadow.
- We would aim to have the site ready for sowing by September 2005. We started stripping the turf in March 2005.
That is basically it. A doddle really...
Have a look at the photo's in the photo section, they tell you all about how we did it.