This spring came a touch early and strangly for us in The Netherlands... first we had some unseasonably hot weather, which made some of our plants come up early... followed by a strangely cold blast... including SNOW! We live in strange climatic times....

Anyway, this sort of weather combined with the fact that recently had our house remortared, meant that we had a great deal of post winter garden recovery to do. The mortaring of the house involves drilling out most of the the old mortar and then refilling it with the new mortar between the bricks... but it means that all the concrete dust spreads everywhere! Plus, it rained soon afterwards... which made the dust conceal into a bit of a hard slurry.....

Anyway, I'm going to do my best to describe what I'm doing... I'm no gardener, so I'm not sure what half the plants are called... my wife chooses, and I dig and plant... ask no questions!

The Chaos

Luckily my neighbour had an industrial vacuum cleaner that I could use for the outdoors... so, the first order of the month was an attempt clean all the concrete out from the roofs, pavement, garden and grass.... Seriously, it is everywhere... I have also washed the windows several times, and I'm still finding stuff on the wood.

I had a great afternoon vacuuming the grass.. I'm sure the neighbours and passersby all had a good laugh... me on my knees, with a loud vaccum cleaner... trying to break up the concrete chunks with the metal tool, and then vacuum up all the debris plus a healthy dose of the soil as well....

The workmen weren't so gentle with the wall attachments either! Basically just shearing through all the fasteners instead of removing them with a screwdriver! Bastards!

... on the other side of the shed, I'm wasn't sure if this grape vine had seen it's last summer....

The State of the (Back) Garden

So... after a bit an uncommonly handyman moment... I did manage to reattach the trellises... and actually do a better job of them than when I first had them up (or just stuck half heartedly in the ground....

As you can see, both climbing plants are doing pretty well... getting more sun after being raised up again and having a good watering... with more water getting to the roots instead of being siphoned away by a hard layer of concrete dust.

Moving clockwise around the garden, I had uprooted a plant in this spot... a sad casualty of the winter. Which means that we have a bit of space for something else... in the past, we had grown some beans here... but my wife wants to have a smallish sort of tree (apple?) or something that can be trained up onto a lattice to give us a bit of privacy from the neighbour. (We like them... but it is still nice to have some private space in your own back yard!).

However, this plant will also grow into a small (no higher than two metres) tree... so, if there is a tree in the previous spot then this would have to move before it gets too big for me to move by myself. So, I'm leaning towards a climber and a trellis!

This is the hedge that has been here since we moved it (and it is the only survivor from our renovating of the back yard!)... we do love it... it does get a bit thin in the lower right, as it doesn't quite get enough Sun there.... but otherwise, it does stay pretty full in the warmer months. It probably is time for me to start trimming it soon. There has been an internal request to let the top grow a touch higher, perhaps maybe 10-20 cm higher. I also have to look a bit at the gate, the latch doesn't quite catch properly.... but the gate doesn't swing open anyway, so it isn't really a huge problem.... so not really on the top of the list of things to do!

In front of the hedge, we have these two plants... the first is this sort of ball like bundle of flowers that come in pink and blue (and perhaps white?).... I can't remember what it is called... but it is pretty common. The second (I'm also not sure what it is called!) is a surprise survivor from the concrete workers... they had dumped a heavy tool on it, and it was broken in several places... we really didn't think it was going to mend and thrive... but here it is!

In this far corner, we have a little cherry tree... which will soon be competing for water with the large tree right next to it..... again, it is a tree that won't grow too big. We would like a little bit of cover in our garden, but we really don't have the space for anything large (actually, our neighbour also doesn't... his tree keeps dumping pine needles into our garden and the other neighbour complains that it shades their garden... and it is starting to do damage to the fence.... Sigh.....

Unfortunately, the cherry tree does keep getting infested with these black aphids (luizen)... we still can't figure out why... so we dutifully keep spraying it to get rid of the colonies... any tips here would be really appreciated!

Moving around again in the clockwise direction brings us to our little blackberry plants (there are three)... which we are hoping to train into a cover on the fence behind... this will be their second summer (we planted them last spring), and so far they are doing well... they did bear a little bit of fruit last year... but we will try and fertilise them correctly this year to see if they can produce better quality fruit.

Sadly... another non-survivor.... this was a red leaf Japanese maple(?) tree. Over the last summer, it seemed to have had some problems with the leaves shriveling up... perhaps we planted it in a spot that was too sunny? Anyway, we will give it a month or two to see if it will recover... there are some spots that still feel alive, but most of it is definitely dead. Anyway, this gives us a great deal of empty ground from here to the cherry tree... which we will have to think about. A place that does get quite a lot of afternoon sun....

... and finally we make it around to the last bit of garden land before returning to the pavement. This is the mixed herbs (rosemary and thyme) and lavender patch... when we planted them, we had them quite seperate... they seem to enjoy each others company and have really intermingled quite a bit. So, we'll leave them like that.... plus, there is a bit more room for something else!

Last and not least... the grass has recovered after a good few days of watering and a generous application of fertiliser.... this area used to be concrete when we bought the place... but we took half of it out, and replaced it with grass... much nicer and much much cooler! However, it does mean that I have to break out the lawn-mower on occasion... still, I'm happy that the grass has recovered from it's very very patchy state... it made all that vacuuming worthwhile!

Coming Plans

The major project for this year is the renovation of the front garden... which is in total disarray... with unkempt plants and dead plants and still a good covering of concrete dust... plus mossy tiles and bricks... it also gets some back-handed remarks from the old couple down the street when they pass by... along the lines of... "great that the garden takes care of itself..."... on an unrelated topic... I heard that if you had a clean record, you can possibly get away with one murder in your life... maybe that is an urban myth....

We are thinking of making more grass here.... and completely revamping the plants (not pictured...). Plus, maybe a half underground bike shelter... which would free up the garage for a possible future extension of the house! Anyway, these are the plans... my wife was looking into it... but I suspect we've missed the train for this summer... and we will need to postpone this until next summer....

In the short term... in the back garden, it will be choosing some new plants to enter the dead spaces (plus removing out the dead or unwanted plants....). Followed by a good general manuring of the garden beds... this year, we will use special plant food for the grape vine and the blackberry bushes... to see if it makes a difference to their fruit!