To try to explain why I ham clearing the area!

I owned the house last summer so I saw the garden last year, a jungle and
not what I want. It was a good example of the wrong plants being planted in
the wrong place, it was originally planted about 25 years ago and all the
smaller shrubs have been killed off by the rampant ones. There were about
30 so called dwarf conifers, the sort sold as low growing and dwarf, the
biggest was 30 yards across. Then there were brambles, russian vine and
honeysuckle through the lot which meant all the plants were bare for the
bottom 6 foot. Also down the north side were 70 odd leylandii at about 90ft
tall, some of which had collapsed and were growing horizontally. From what
I saw there was nothing worth keeping.

What I have found is a paved area with stone build raised beds which are
about 3 foot above ground level, I had no idea it was there and much is
damaged by the conifers and the paving is mostly broken. The areas between
were completely full of old leaves and confer droppings. From what I can
tell this part of the old garden was set out with raised beds in a "s"
pattern. Each bed runs from one side of the garden to within 4 feet of the
other side, each bed is 4 foot 6 inches wide wit a 4 foot path betwen them,
so far I have found 4 of these and I suspect there is at least one more.
Also at the end of each one there is a marble (I think, white and hard)
lifesize head, looks a bit like an angels head) I have no idea what they
were used for - does anybody know about this sort of thing. Once I find out
what the real state of this is I may try to repair it as it may be a great
raised bed for vegetables although the idea of walking between them all on
the "s" pattern to get to the rest of the garden does not appeal to me.

The other thing I have found is the remains of a greenhouse which was about
25 foot long and about 12 foot wide, again this is totally destroyed by 25
years (possibly 50years) of neglect. It clearly was a wooden building with
a couple of foot of brick as a base and a coal boiler and massive pipework.
It had the remains of a cold frame down each side and a tap which has water
attached, I know because the pipe broke when I found the tap by treading on
it, it is great getting soaked on a frosty day, fortunately the pipe was
lead so I managed to bend it over to slow the flow until I could get it
fixed, interestingly turning the water off in the house didn't stop the
flow.

I am about two thirds of the way down the garden with my pilot cutting and
in total I have cleared a third of it. The total garden is about 70 feet
wide and 650 feet long so I have a long way to go so who knows what I will
find next, I do know there are some very poor fruit trees at the far end but
they have lot's of dead branches and may not be worth keeping. I couldn't
get to them last summer but from what I could see there had very little
fruit on them.

At the end of the day this must have been laid out as a quite impressive
garden, the house dates from the 1920's and was build in the gronds of an
old manor, I am the third owner in that time and I as the last owner only
had the house for 5 years I suspect these gardens were laid out when the
house was built.

Bob


"Steve Harris" wrote in message
...
In article ,
(Bob) wrote:

The decision I have taken is to clear the whole lot and start again.

Are you sure? It may be better to live with it for a while until you see
what you have got - especially when the weather warms up. I would just
remove stuff you definitely don't want initially.

Steve Harris - Cheltenham - Real address steve AT netservs DOT com