"Sacha" wrote in message
. uk...
On 6/5/05 7:19 pm, in article ,
"ClarissaGG" wrote:

I can't see any possibility of removing the stones, to be honest. It's a
pretty big area and we don't have anyone to help us. I can envisage
raking a
few barrow loads off, but I can't imagine us doing this indefinitely
because
the weeds are going to start coming up, and then we'll be back where we
started.

So give up on having a lawn - it's a waste of space for many people, quite
literally. They mow, feed, water, weed and pray to the damn thing and
rarely, if ever, use it! If you're not burning to run barefoot through
the
dewy grass - stubbing your toes as you go on your stones - and don't wish
to
sunbathe in the nuddy hidden by an artfully overgrown patch, why bother
with
it? You say your drive runs alongside it, so I'm guessing that it's a
front
lawn, possibly overlooked by neighbours, visitors to your house, or
passers
by, so you're probably not going to use it for sitting on much, either.
Pah
to it! ;-)
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)


Sacha, that's a wonderful reply. Here's why.....

We went off to the pub this evening and talked about our options, literally
sketching out ideas on the back of (several) envelopes as we did so. Most
of our little sketches and designs seemed to show that our intended pond and
intended beds take up far more space than we originally thought, and we
ended up saying, "Hang on, do we really need or want a lawn?"

I think we've concluded that a lawn, in the usual sense, isn't really what
we want. We really just want to have a few patches of grass here and there
to fill in some gaps. We've decided to concentrate on the veggie beds
(buying in some top soil if necessary) and the pond, and we'll relegate the
grassy patches to "would be nice to have" rather than "must have". Your
reply has absolutely confirmed my feeling about it.

Let's hope I feel the same in the morning, when the G and Ts have worn off!!

Thanks everyone. Really helpful.

Clarissa.

On 6/5/05 11:23 pm, in article ,
"ClarissaGG" wrote:


"Sacha" wrote in message
. uk...
snip

So give up on having a lawn - it's a waste of space for many people, quite
literally. They mow, feed, water, weed and pray to the damn thing and
rarely, if ever, use it! If you're not burning to run barefoot through
the
dewy grass - stubbing your toes as you go on your stones - and don't wish
to
sunbathe in the nuddy hidden by an artfully overgrown patch, why bother
with
it? You say your drive runs alongside it, so I'm guessing that it's a
front
lawn, possibly overlooked by neighbours, visitors to your house, or
passers
by, so you're probably not going to use it for sitting on much, either.
Pah
to it! ;-)

Sacha, that's a wonderful reply. Here's why.....

We went off to the pub this evening and talked about our options, literally
sketching out ideas on the back of (several) envelopes as we did so. Most
of our little sketches and designs seemed to show that our intended pond and
intended beds take up far more space than we originally thought, and we
ended up saying, "Hang on, do we really need or want a lawn?"

I think we've concluded that a lawn, in the usual sense, isn't really what
we want. We really just want to have a few patches of grass here and there
to fill in some gaps. We've decided to concentrate on the veggie beds
(buying in some top soil if necessary) and the pond, and we'll relegate the
grassy patches to "would be nice to have" rather than "must have". Your
reply has absolutely confirmed my feeling about it.

Let's hope I feel the same in the morning, when the G and Ts have worn off!!

Thanks everyone. Really helpful.

G&T and bacon 'n eggs maybe? ;-)
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)

On Fri, 06 May 2005 14:22:37 GMT, "ClarissaGG"
wrote:

I wonder if someone can advise me please?

I've just had my large, derelict front garden levelled and rotivated,
leaving me, I'd hoped with a great expanse of beautiful soil to start
cultivating.

Trouble is, now that the matted grass and weeds have been removed, I see
that the soil is incredibly stony. Could someone advise what the best thing
to do here is please?


Not necessarily appropriate for lawns or veggies, but Beth Chatto's
Gravel Garden (published by Frances Lincoln, 2000) will give you hope
and maybe some ideas. Her 'soil' was mostly flint pebbles and sand.
Try your local library.


--
Chris

E-mail: christopher[dot]hogg[at]virgin[dot]net

Chris Hogg wrote:
On Fri, 06 May 2005 14:22:37 GMT, "ClarissaGG"

wrote:

I wonder if someone can advise me please?

I've just had my large, derelict front garden levelled and
rotivated,
leaving me, I'd hoped with a great expanse of beautiful soil to
start
cultivating.

Trouble is, now that the matted grass and weeds have been removed,
I
see that the soil is incredibly stony. Could someone advise what
the
best thing to do here is please?


Not necessarily appropriate for lawns or veggies, but Beth Chatto's
Gravel Garden (published by Frances Lincoln, 2000) will give you
hope
and maybe some ideas. Her 'soil' was mostly flint pebbles and sand.
Try your local library.

And in any case, it grew grass and weeds well enough, so don't worry.
If you can grow good weeds, you can grow a good garden. Add as much
well-rotted organic matter as you can get to improve the
water-retentive capacity, of course.

--
Mike.

"Mike Lyle" wrote in message
...
Chris Hogg wrote:
On Fri, 06 May 2005 14:22:37 GMT, "ClarissaGG"



Not necessarily appropriate for lawns or veggies, but Beth Chatto's
Gravel Garden (published by Frances Lincoln, 2000) will give you
hope
and maybe some ideas. Her 'soil' was mostly flint pebbles and sand.
Try your local library.

And in any case, it grew grass and weeds well enough, so don't worry.
If you can grow good weeds, you can grow a good garden. Add as much
well-rotted organic matter as you can get to improve the
water-retentive capacity, of course.

--
Mike.


Thanks Mike and Chris, and all the others. I feel a lot better about this
now, and am even looking forward to the challenge.

Famous last words!

C.

"ClarissaGG" wrote:

I can't see any possibility of removing the stones, to be honest. It's a
pretty big area and we don't have anyone to help us. I can envisage
raking a
few barrow loads off, but I can't imagine us doing this indefinitely
because
the weeds are going to start coming up, and then we'll be back where we
started.

So give up on having a lawn - it's a waste of space for many people, quite
literally. They mow, feed, water, weed and pray to the damn thing and
rarely, if ever, use it! If you're not burning to run barefoot through
the
dewy grass - stubbing your toes as you go on your stones - and don't wish
to
sunbathe in the nuddy hidden by an artfully overgrown patch, why bother
with
it? You say your drive runs alongside it, so I'm guessing that it's a
front
lawn, possibly overlooked by neighbours, visitors to your house, or
passers
by, so you're probably not going to use it for sitting on much, either.
Pah
to it! ;-)
--
ClarissaGG writes

Sacha, that's a wonderful reply. Here's why.....

We went off to the pub this evening and talked about our options, literally
sketching out ideas on the back of (several) envelopes as we did so. Most
of our little sketches and designs seemed to show that our intended pond and
intended beds take up far more space than we originally thought, and we
ended up saying, "Hang on, do we really need or want a lawn?"

I think we've concluded that a lawn, in the usual sense, isn't really what
we want. We really just want to have a few patches of grass here and there
to fill in some gaps. We've decided to concentrate on the veggie beds
(buying in some top soil if necessary) and the pond, and we'll relegate the
grassy patches to "would be nice to have" rather than "must have". Your
reply has absolutely confirmed my feeling about it.

Let's hope I feel the same in the morning, when the G and Ts have worn off!!

Thanks everyone. Really helpful.

It doesn't stop there :-))

As I was reading this I thought - make a plan, a sketch, and then use
some pegs (better to see it from the house) or sand to draw it out on
the ground, and then 'live' with it for a few days, making your usual
trips out into it and imagining yourself doing whatever you want to do
in your 'garden'. That way you will get an idea of whether it works for
you and does what you want it to do.

Next I would not plan on trying to finish it all at once, it may be too
much to take on and you will get demoralised when you can't keep up. So
plan it in stages. Don't be afraid to just grass a lot of it over for
the time being until you can set out the beds. Turf can always be taken
up and used elsewhere or composted. If you leave it bare you will just
get more weeds.

Ponds are magical things, and I love the comment 'a pond can never be
too big'. I would try and plan to use the spoil that comes out as some
sort of bank next to it, and I created also a sunken rock garden
alongside.

I would also site things so you can have some surprises as you go along,
don't make it all visible from the start. For instance make one part of
the pond visible, but the rest hidden by the bank, so you only see it in
full as you approach. You can put shrubs on the bank. Also plan some
change in levels as you go around.

If you have as much room as this, then you can have trees and decent
shrubs too. If you buy container trees (rather than barerooted) you can
prop them up and then go back inside and see how they look before
planting them. My first trees totally changed the garden, by introducing
a vertical element that was completely missing before. I now have put in
about 5 a year all round the house, including the boundaries, and I keep
finding places where I can put another few....

TBH I would start with a few of the trees and the layout of the pond,
and then follow as Sacha said, with paved areas and pathways around the
garden as they are the immovables and you need to get them right. The
rest will tell you where they want to go once you get started and walk
about in it, or sit and look. It will evolve :-)
--
David

"Dave" wrote in message
...
"ClarissaGG" wrote:

Thanks everyone. Really helpful.

It doesn't stop there :-))

As I was reading this I thought - make a plan, a sketch, and then use
some pegs (better to see it from the house) or sand to draw it out on
the ground, and then 'live' with it for a few days, making your usual
trips out into it and imagining yourself doing whatever you want to do
in your 'garden'. That way you will get an idea of whether it works for
you and does what you want it to do.

Next I would not plan on trying to finish it all at once, it may be too
much to take on and you will get demoralised when you can't keep up. So
plan it in stages. Don't be afraid to just grass a lot of it over for
the time being until you can set out the beds. Turf can always be taken
up and used elsewhere or composted. If you leave it bare you will just
get more weeds.

Ponds are magical things, and I love the comment 'a pond can never be
too big'. I would try and plan to use the spoil that comes out as some
sort of bank next to it, and I created also a sunken rock garden
alongside.

I would also site things so you can have some surprises as you go along,
don't make it all visible from the start. For instance make one part of
the pond visible, but the rest hidden by the bank, so you only see it in
full as you approach. You can put shrubs on the bank. Also plan some
change in levels as you go around.

If you have as much room as this, then you can have trees and decent
shrubs too. If you buy container trees (rather than barerooted) you can
prop them up and then go back inside and see how they look before
planting them. My first trees totally changed the garden, by introducing
a vertical element that was completely missing before. I now have put in
about 5 a year all round the house, including the boundaries, and I keep
finding places where I can put another few....

TBH I would start with a few of the trees and the layout of the pond,
and then follow as Sacha said, with paved areas and pathways around the
garden as they are the immovables and you need to get them right. The
rest will tell you where they want to go once you get started and walk
about in it, or sit and look. It will evolve :-)
--
David

Thanks David. We have indeed been pegging out spaces today to place the
potential pond and some of the beds. We've got room for a fairly big
wildlife pond - certainly 30 feet by about 10 feet. The 4 angular beds we've
sketched out fit around the rectangular pond. This is going be quite a lot
of work as it is, so we thought we'd tackle this bit first, and let the rest
sort of evolve. In other words, pretty much as you've suggested. The points
about shrubs and trees are very useful. We planted about 5 trees last year -
our first year in the house for exactly the reason you mention: the garden
had no vertical features at all.

Thank you for your insights. I'm definitely feeling more encouraged now than
I was originally!

C.

ClarissaGG wrote:
Wow, lots of diverse opinion. I'm being thrown from gloom to relief then
back again.

I can't see any possibility of removing the stones, to be honest. It's a
pretty big area and we don't have anyone to help us. I can envisage raking a
few barrow loads off, but I can't imagine us doing this indefinitely because
the weeds are going to start coming up, and then we'll be back where we
started.

Do stones fall upwards?

"ClarissaGG" wrote in
:



Do I try to get rid of the stones? This seems like it would be a
never-ending task. The ground is quite compacted and I suspect there's
more stoniness beneath. Or would it be an idea to buy in a load of top
soil? As I said, it's quite a big area - probably 20 metres by 25
metres - so it would need a lot of soil. But would it solve the
problem anyway?

Would it be feasible to think in terms of building raised beds for the
veg and just grass-seeding the rest? Though I presume it would be very
hard to mow if it was this stony?



Just to say that I live just down the hill from a gravel quarry, and have
incredibly stony soil. I don't have any problems mowing my lawns - as
someone said, once the lawn has got established, it makes a sort of mat
over the top of the pebbles anyway, so you only need to worry if you have
big chunks sticking up several inches - and those can usually be either
squished in with a boot (small scale) or rolled (large scale).

In the beds, I would heartily recommend loads of mulch on top (compost,
manure, grass clippings, whatever you've got) and where you can, plant
smaller plants into the mulch and let the roots dig their own way into the
subsoil, rather than you digging up the stony stuff which knackers your
back and your spade and doesn't give the plants such a good start off
anyway.

You'll find your beds start off looking rather raised with all the organic
matter, but as the worms do the digging for you the beds will level off and
start to look less barrow-moundish and more gardenly.

Keep the making of big holes for large shrubs or trees to where you really
need them is what I do.

Victoria
--
gardening on a north-facing hill
in South-East Cornwall
--

ClarissaGG writes

As I was reading this I thought - make a plan, a sketch, and then use
some pegs (better to see it from the house) or sand to draw it out on
the ground, and then 'live' with it for a few days, making your usual
trips out into it and imagining yourself doing whatever you want to do
in your 'garden'. That way you will get an idea of whether it works for
you and does what you want it to do.

Thanks David. We have indeed been pegging out spaces today to place the
potential pond and some of the beds. We've got room for a fairly big
wildlife pond - certainly 30 feet by about 10 feet. The 4 angular beds we've
sketched out fit around the rectangular pond. This is going be quite a lot
of work as it is, so we thought we'd tackle this bit first, and let the rest
sort of evolve. In other words, pretty much as you've suggested. The points
about shrubs and trees are very useful. We planted about 5 trees last year -
our first year in the house for exactly the reason you mention: the garden
had no vertical features at all.

Thank you for your insights. I'm definitely feeling more encouraged now than
I was originally!

I get moods of activity and then lapses of energy, when I just look out
at it all and enjoy the view, or sit on a stone and look at it. Don't
feel anyone is marking you on how quickly you are doing it!

Keep coming back and tell us how you get on. Its fun for us to all learn
too from each others inputs :-)

Good luck!
--
David

"Chris Bacon" wrote in message
...
ClarissaGG wrote:
Wow, lots of diverse opinion. I'm being thrown from gloom to relief then
back again.

I can't see any possibility of removing the stones, to be honest. It's a
pretty big area and we don't have anyone to help us. I can envisage
raking a few barrow loads off, but I can't imagine us doing this
indefinitely because the weeds are going to start coming up, and then
we'll be back where we started.

Do stones fall upwards?

They do in my garden!

Like Clarissa's, my veg garden is full of stones, there are so many, and in
view of the fact that I'm both lazy and having trouble moving, I only worry
about the larger ones, the half bricks which seem to dominate, I often
wonder
how the devil most of them have got there.

When we first moved here, there was a huge pile of ash at the bottom of the
garden, one day I thought I should move it, as I started to shovel it up I
discovered that underneath was a HUGE pile of empty bottles, some I imagined
go back to the stone age, I still do not understand why someone would take
the trouble to walk 200 feet to the bottom of the garden whenever they had
an empty bottle rather than put in in the dustbin at the backdoor, and then
cover them with ash from the fire.

--
alan

reply to alan(dot)holmes27(at)virgin(dot)net

"ClarissaGG" wrote in message
...

"Chris Bacon" wrote in message
...
ClarissaGG wrote:
I've just had my large, derelict front garden levelled and rotivated,
leaving me, I'd hoped with a great expanse of beautiful soil to start
cultivating.

Trouble is, now that the matted grass and weeds have been removed, I see
that the soil is incredibly stony. Could someone advise what the best
thing to do here is please?

What sort of stones? What sort of soil? (approximately) where are you?

What sort of stones? Mm! Smallish pebbles and bit of broken rock rather
than great lumps of concrete left over from building work.

We're in Berkshire. The soil is clay, though couldn't tell you much more
about it at the moment.

I'm in Berkshire as well, it must be a feature of the county!(:-)

Of course being in the Thames valley would make the ground rather clayey!

I do have two areas of grass, I would hesitate to call them 'lawns', neither
of which give much trouble with mowing, the mower only gets damaged when I
miss the edges of the grass areas and go over the 'flower' beds!

--
alan

reply to alan(dot)holmes27(at)virgin(dot)net

Alan Holmes wrote:

Like Clarissa's, my veg garden is full of stones, there are so many,
and in view of the fact that I'm both lazy and having trouble moving,
I only worry about the larger ones, the half bricks which seem to
dominate, I often wonder
how the devil most of them have got there.

I think that builders plant them. They must have a builders' story about how
someone once grew a brick tree, and so they keep on planting them in the
hope that one will germinate.

I mean, bricks aren't free. Why else would the builder have wasted so many
by planting them in the garden of my newish house?

I still do not
understand why someone would take the trouble to walk 200 feet to the
bottom of the garden whenever they had an empty bottle rather than
put in in the dustbin at the backdoor, and then cover them with ash
from the fire.

Ah, I may have a real answer to that :-)

Two sisters, distant relatives of mine, lived together in their declining
years. They had a weakness for the cooking sherry - well, and whisky and
gin, come to that. They always wrapped the empty bottles in newspaper, put
them in a carrier bag and then smashed them with a hammer before putting
them in the bin. This was so the binmen wouldn't think that they were secret
tipplers. The bags did jangle, so even if the binmen were fooled they must
have thought that the old ladies broke an awful lot of things.

I think you've found another version of this.

--
Sally Holmes
Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England