Garden Before - Freakyfrog

Back in 1985 we purchased the piece of land as pictured above. It had no soil on it – it was a shale base. The plantation behind it was the result of the National Coal Board’s regeneration project. That used to be a slag heap from the pit. The Pit shaft was at the top of the hill and in days gone by this hill used to steam with fumes from the piles of slag that were left there. Anyway the coal board brought soil in and planted the trees from 1981. The photo’s show that neighbours used to bring their rubbish down to this area which is right at the side of our house and burn it. The final straw for us when one neighbour (long gone) had a new roof put on and brought all the smashed slates and wooden latts down and dumped them on this land right by the side of the house. We applied to the coal board to purchase the land and over the following 20 years we have made it into our garden. We had to start by bringing soil. We were lucky enough to find a developer down the road who was building some units and had a lot of soil to give away. He leant us a tractor and trailer and we shipped up tonnes of the stuff and I spread it by hand with a spade.

This land used to flood too whenever it rained heavily one year it backed up and flooded our cellar. Since we maintained it it has never flooded since, until this year and the majority of the far side of the garden has been underwater. It has not however got into the house (which is a blessing)

It was a case of the blind leading the blind I started out not knowing the first thing about gardening. I bought my first Book A Dr David Hessayon on Bedding Plants and another one on gardening – book of shrubs. From there on it was trial and error. (more error than trials). I will post further pictures of how the garden has developed at a later stage.

Written by freakyfrog on 2007/07/13 | Permalink to this article