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

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

Why not? It's a superb all-weather surface to ride horeses on and stays within the arena, not all over the land. Most all-weather surfaces are made from similar recycled products such as used car tyres, assorted fibres with oils added and so on. It doesn't freeze, isn't as wearing on the horse's hoof wall and gives good 'bounce' instead of jarring their legs like frozen ground or very dry earth. I can't see the problem myself.

(It is just the plastic, by the way, no copper)

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

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

"Martin Sykes" wrote in message
...
"Franz Heymann" wrote in message
...
That sounds like a pretty irresponsible thing to do! Are they really
distributing small cut up pieces of copper and PVC all over the place?
It

Just a guess but they probably recycle the copper as it's useful and just
chop up the plastic sheath?

Disposing of unrottable PVC in this way is just as irresponsible. I doubt
very much if it is legal to do so.

Franz

"Franz Heymann" wrote in message
...
Disposing of unrottable PVC in this way is just as irresponsible. I doubt
very much if it is legal to do so.

Franz



I'm not sure this would count as 'disposing of it'. It's just being used as
a surface to ride horses on. I don't think it's any different that putting
down tarmac or concrete. As long as at the end of its life it is removed and
disposed of properly then what's the problem? People use broken CDs as
decorative mulch. Bob Flowerdew uses old carpets. As long as that's not it's
final resting place it should be fine.

--
Martin & Anna Sykes
( Remove x's when replying )
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~sykesm

On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 20:06:59 -0000, "Bob" wrote:

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,
snip

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.
snip

Sounds fascinating. Like an archeological project. I hope you're
taking pictures of 'before' and 'after' as well as progress and
discoveries in between. It might also be worthwhile to see if you
can find out something of the history of the house/grounds, too. This
is certainly a project worthy of documentation.

"Franz Heymann" wrote in message
...
Disposing of unrottable PVC in this way is just as irresponsible. I doubt
very much if it is legal to do so.

Franz



I'm not sure this would count as 'disposing of it'. It's just being used as
a surface to ride horses on. I don't think it's any different that putting
down tarmac or concrete. As long as at the end of its life it is removed and
disposed of properly then what's the problem? People use broken CDs as
decorative mulch. Bob Flowerdew uses old carpets. As long as that's not it's
final resting place it should be fine.

--
Martin & Anna Sykes
( Remove x's when replying )
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~sykesm

On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 20:06:59 -0000, "Bob" wrote:

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,
snip

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.
snip

Sounds fascinating. Like an archeological project. I hope you're
taking pictures of 'before' and 'after' as well as progress and
discoveries in between. It might also be worthwhile to see if you
can find out something of the history of the house/grounds, too. This
is certainly a project worthy of documentation.

"Bob" wrote in message ...
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


Bob

A fascinating read, thanks.

Do you have plans for what you want to achieve with your garden? It
sounds as if you will be able to create a few different distinct areas
within your garden.

You need to do the basics first like work out where the sun rises and
sets and winds blow from. What soil type you have Acid Alkali and if
is is light (sandy) or heavy(clayey). Get a feel for how good the
soil structure is and look around to see what other gardeners are
growing.

Then work up a design for each area that you plan to develop.

With all that space you can afford to keep stuff you may want later.
So I would be tempted to keep the trunks of the conifers. You mau
want to make some more informal types of raised beds or banking
somewhere in the garden.

And lastly, take photographs as you go.

Nice project

Phil

"Bob" wrote in message ...
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


Bob

A fascinating read, thanks.

Do you have plans for what you want to achieve with your garden? It
sounds as if you will be able to create a few different distinct areas
within your garden.

You need to do the basics first like work out where the sun rises and
sets and winds blow from. What soil type you have Acid Alkali and if
is is light (sandy) or heavy(clayey). Get a feel for how good the
soil structure is and look around to see what other gardeners are
growing.

Then work up a design for each area that you plan to develop.

With all that space you can afford to keep stuff you may want later.
So I would be tempted to keep the trunks of the conifers. You mau
want to make some more informal types of raised beds or banking
somewhere in the garden.

And lastly, take photographs as you go.

Nice project

Phil

Recycling of old wire - this is how it works.

In the old days they used to shove the whole lot into a fire, let it
burn and when cool recover the copper, or whatever metals were left
behind.

This was deemed not very responsible so now wire is recycled like
this.

It is cut into small pieces. It is shaken, thrown around one hell of
a lot and generally agitated until the metal part (copper or other)
falls out. I know it seems hard to believe but apparently it does
just work its way out.

Then they separate the two, recycle the copper and are left with a
load of plastic insulation to deal with. There is no market for
recycling the insulation so what happens next seems to be known
already.

Recycling of old wire - this is how it works.

In the old days they used to shove the whole lot into a fire, let it
burn and when cool recover the copper, or whatever metals were left
behind.

This was deemed not very responsible so now wire is recycled like
this.

It is cut into small pieces. It is shaken, thrown around one hell of
a lot and generally agitated until the metal part (copper or other)
falls out. I know it seems hard to believe but apparently it does
just work its way out.

Then they separate the two, recycle the copper and are left with a
load of plastic insulation to deal with. There is no market for
recycling the insulation so what happens next seems to be known
already.

Do you have plans for what you want to achieve with your garden? It
sounds as if you will be able to create a few different distinct areas
within your garden.

I did have a plan but as I have discovered things I am modifying it.
Basically the land is on a slight slope and runs exactly east - west with
the bottom of the slope being in the east. My first part of the project
was to build a conservatory which meant that we were left with a steep slope
for the first 10 yards or so, I have now terraced this with a wide set of
steps - in the centre of these is a ramp to get a wheel barrow up. I have
built a wooden ram which pits into slots in the brickwork to allow other
things up including a mini digger so far - this ramp is normally stored in
my workshop. The beds withing the terrace are to be used for annuals as it
will give a good lot of colour in the summer and they are easy to clear each
year to allow me to keep the beds clean.

Next will be a patio area with a 20 foot by 10 foot pond along the north
side, I have excavated it (hence the digger) but it will be finished in the
spring when the fibre glass will set properly, along the north side is an
eight foot high wall at which ends at a small outbuilding which has the
filtration equipment in it. From the front of the outbuilding across the
garden I planned a frame to hold climbers and to effectively separate the
'room part of the garden from the rest. The winds are predominately west
to east so breaking up the garden into rooms will soften the impact of the
wind, also as the run north south they do not cread a massive shadow
problem.

After that my plans were a broad path winding between shrubs followed by
another break this is now going to change as I will have the greenhouse on
the site of the old one with a smaller area of perennials and small shrubs
between the first divider and the greenhouse. Then comes the raised
beds - they look like a 12 month project on their own to get right - the
raised beds run north south and the greenhouse is on the same orientation.
So far there will be no grass at all, the paths will be brick paving to the
point of the end of the raised beds.

After that I do want to have an orchard and I still want my path winding
through shrubs but I will have to see what else I find. Of course I still
have about 400 feet of garden to plan so any thoughts are welcome.

The soil, it is pretty exhaused because of all the treens but it is good
quality but faily light, I only know about some parts but when I excavated
the pond the soil was a good 18 inches deep before the subsoil, I suspect it
is shallower further up the slope which might explain the raised beds. On
thing about the beds is that they have a pretty substansial woden frame down
the centre of each one which must have supported something.

I have retialed the trunks of the very large leylandii, they didn't have a
single trunk and I have about 300 of these stacked in the garden - I plan to
use them to create the frams form my climbers.

Yes I am taking photographs and so is my wife, including the one of me
trying to stop the water when I cut into the pipe, the ground is white over
with frost and she finds it amusing to show everybody.

Anyway it is a project that will take me a number of years and no doubt the
plans will change many times as they have so far, what I have tried to do is
to finish the first area before moving on but winter is the best time for
jungle clearance (no leaves to get in the way).

Bob