Major renovations

[RickR]

It will be 3 to 4 months before our gardens here are at that stage!

Tim, you certainly have a lot of evergreen perennials.  They really add to the winter and early spring vista.  Good luck with your continuing "battle"!

[Lina Hesseling]

Tim, it is great to hear you're making progress. The pictures show this. Are you still planning to open the nursery in spring? Did I understand it well, there was a nursery before? What is the name of the nursery?

Lina.

[Tim Ingram]

Lina - we ran a small specialist nursery with the garden from the mid-1980's, growing many drought tolerant plants, alpines and woodland perennials. We aim to go back to this but on a smaller scale and concentrating especially on alpines and more choice perennials. Alpines in particular are being grown by fewer and fewer nurseries in the UK, and this must have a knock on effect on the number of gardeners likely to grow them. The nursery is just under my name.

[Tim Ingram]

This bed in the middle of the garden is full of bulbs and every few years gets a new topdressing with gravel. This tends to stimulate activity nearby in the garden too and the woodland, which is full of hellebores and snowdrops in particular has also had a good tidy up. Unfortunately our garden is rather large so other areas don't look quite so good, but working steadily like this can have a big impact and it's great to see plants beginning to grow away (for example Helleborus thibetanus is just starting now elsewhere in the garden, and it is pleasing when such a special plant is establishing well).

[James McGee]

Tim,  Do you put any barrier under your gravel beds to prevent the gravel from sinking into the soil?

[Hoy]

This bed in the middle of the garden is full of bulbs and every few years gets a new topdressing with gravel. This tends to stimulate activity nearby in the garden too and the woodland, which is full of hellebores and snowdrops in particular has also had a good tidy up. Unfortunately our garden is rather large so other areas don't look quite so good, but working steadily like this can have a big impact and it's great to see plants beginning to grow away (for example Helleborus thibetanus is just starting now elsewhere in the garden, and it is pleasing when such a special plant is establishing well).

Seems you make great progress in the renovation!
But to say "unfortunately" of a large (and great) garden In my opinion a "garden" can't be huge enough - I would let it develop to a woodland tending itself if I had a larger garden

[Tim Ingram]

James - no I haven't used any membrane because I want the gravel to be slowly incorporated into the soil and improve the surface drainage. It gradually disappears and so after a few years I heavily topdress with more. I know that some growers with sand beds put in a barrier to keep the sand free of soil, though I haven't done this elsewhere in the garden. It may have been wise to do it because worms and ants are steadily bringing up a lot of soil. I will probably do this next time.

Trond - I always used to think myself fortunate until parts of the garden began to revert to wilderness! Much of the garden is fairly intensively planted (ie: I like plants too much!), and some does need to go back to more naturalistic and wild woodland planting, which tends to happen by default.

[RickR]

Further discussion of weed fabric and sand beds is continued here:
http://nargs.org/smf/index.php?topic=965.0