And he had the time of his life ;).
We decided the garden needed a bit of tough love, so we hired a digger to scrape off the bindweed, which had formed into a series of thick cables covering the earth like a carpet. The digger also allowed us to level the garden off a bit for a flatter surface.
We probably won't be planting anything for a while yet, later in the year or maybe next Spring, but the orange and lemon trees can now breathe and with access to the light they're already showing a lot of new growth. We've chopped the oleanders edging the garden back to about 50cm and they're already regenerating. They make excellent hedges as they are green all year round and display beautiful flowers all through the summer months so we didn't want to get rid of them, but ours were a bit out of control so cutting them right back will allow us to regrow in a neater shape. Within a year or two they should have reached head height again and will provide security, privacy and absorb some of the background road noise.
The garden is now bare earth. We have applied weedkiller, carefully, and will remove bindweed shoots as soon as they appear to try and stunt its progress over winter. Some grass is already shooting and soon, with the bindweed under control, we can work on developing a lawn.
We are in the process of dealing with planning departments to work out what sort of fencing we can get away with around the exterior property boundary, but in the meantime we have applied some brown mesh to the fencing between us and our neighbour to the north, which is an orange grove, and repaired and repainted the dwarf wall on that side, just to smarten the place up a bit. An awful lot of weeds had to be pulled out of the fencing first but we're quite pleased with the result.
Onwards and upwards!
We decided the garden needed a bit of tough love, so we hired a digger to scrape off the bindweed, which had formed into a series of thick cables covering the earth like a carpet. The digger also allowed us to level the garden off a bit for a flatter surface.
We probably won't be planting anything for a while yet, later in the year or maybe next Spring, but the orange and lemon trees can now breathe and with access to the light they're already showing a lot of new growth. We've chopped the oleanders edging the garden back to about 50cm and they're already regenerating. They make excellent hedges as they are green all year round and display beautiful flowers all through the summer months so we didn't want to get rid of them, but ours were a bit out of control so cutting them right back will allow us to regrow in a neater shape. Within a year or two they should have reached head height again and will provide security, privacy and absorb some of the background road noise.
The garden is now bare earth. We have applied weedkiller, carefully, and will remove bindweed shoots as soon as they appear to try and stunt its progress over winter. Some grass is already shooting and soon, with the bindweed under control, we can work on developing a lawn.
We are in the process of dealing with planning departments to work out what sort of fencing we can get away with around the exterior property boundary, but in the meantime we have applied some brown mesh to the fencing between us and our neighbour to the north, which is an orange grove, and repaired and repainted the dwarf wall on that side, just to smarten the place up a bit. An awful lot of weeds had to be pulled out of the fencing first but we're quite pleased with the result.
Onwards and upwards!
Wow what a difference. Well done GB (:-D) you have done a great job. xx
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