A frivolous post really but I am back in Dubai in the New Year enjoying the blue skies and mid 20s temperatures but obviously spending time planning a year's garden and wood campaign. Jane is poised to travel to home in a few days to spend a good month at Oaklands getting ready for the arrival of the landscapers. What we have started calling "Phase 1" is due to begin in mid-February. I am re-branding this as the "Hogginisation" of Oaklands.
It's been a good 4 or 5 months since the big plan was laid down following a series of discussions between between Jane and her chosen garden designer Cheryl Cummings. I have been focusing an awful lot on the wood which incidentally does not appear on the plan above and represents something like 6o % of the area of the whole property. I have also spent a good deal of time thinking about the meadow. There is however a good portion of the plan that is not going to be tackled with a chainsaw and a bag of Yellow Rattle seed. You might call it the "build stuff" and in many ways its lays out the bones of the whole garden project.
I still have blissfully no idea of how a landscape designer (in this case Anemone - a small local company who work with Cheryl) comes up with pricing and timescales for a project. A huge amount must be down to experience and I am sure it is capable of going very wrong and very right. I understand that they quote in part as a function of area so I asked "Sam the Land" to chop up the whole plan "sensibly" and quote by sections. True to his word but with a little pushing and chasing (I am sure it is not easy) Sam produced a list of I think 7 projects variously titled "New Pond", "Vegetable Garden'', "Greenhouse Footings", "Hoggin Path", "Back of House". "Driveway" and "Between the House and Vegetable Garden". This was a really useful start and helped Jane and I to make some very quick decisions the first of which was to get used to the idea of not going on expensive holidays for the foreseeable future. Oaklands signals a temporary end to my moderate addiction to Imagine Africa's line in beautiful safari travel. Life is a straight up choice for most of us - for us its Hoggin paths or views like this ! We cannot do both this year,
So armed with a list of projects banishing us to Herefordshire and cutting off all hope of escaping up the Zambezi River, the Serengeti or the Okavango Delta wearing our natty Columbus safari gear it was down to some serious thinking. How on earth do you decide what to do first ? The school of thought is that you start at the back of a property and work toward the house so that you are not then pushing heavy machinery over finished areas at later stages or in later years. Logically that would mean putting in the wildlife pond in the South-East corner of the garden. Logically it would also create an amount of spoil. I estimate about 150 cubic metres roughly which is a block as big as a decent size sitting room). Whilst a lovely project in itself it seemed to us that ponds can establish themselves relatively quickly once built and are less of a challenge than perhaps some other projects. The spoil could be lost in the wood and the bank along the edge of the property. I am sure also a mini digger wouldn't do too much damage to a meadow in Winter, I am sorry but ponds are Essentially just holes in the ground with some special soil and a big butanol liner. I have set the pond on one side as a project for the future. Possibly my retirement project in 5 or so years time.
Equally setting out on a project which intrinsically involved resurfacing and reshaping the drive (all noble pursuits I am sure) wasn't firing my personal synapses enough as an initial project to provoke me to invest a significant portion of what we might save in a year. We didn't move to Herefordshire to have the best looking drive in the County. Essentially the areas immediately around the house in terms of hard landscaping are defined even if the borders need extending to take on the huge planting plans that Jane is cooking up at the dining room table. That leaves the big area of "build stuff" between the house and the wood. I have read enough to understand that its important to get the paths in first. A bit like drawing a picture its good to get the sketched outlines in first, The edge on the giant jigsaw.
The obvious path to start with is the long "S" of the Hoggin path that joins the turning circle to drive through the wood at the South-West corner of the garden. That path takes in the mower store and the location of the new compost bins and really defines the transition from formal garden (flowers, vegetables, dining areas, greenhouses, raised beds) to meadow. Hoggin I should mention is that compacted crushed gravel surface that you get at stately homes and around parks. It is the sound of Summer footfall at a National Trust property. There is a perfectly acceptable bark chip alternative for a formal garden area - here below being modeled at Herefordshire's Hampton Court by brother Mark and sister-in-law Sarah. All very workable but lacking the satisfying Coldstream Guard's crunch. What we found with bark areas in Manchester is that they rot and require upkeep - a lot of new bark chips year on year. The general vibe of lovely raised beds and an old victorian brick wall is what we have in mind though. We want Hoggin !
Hoggin will set to a firm and durable surface. You can vary the color from a light yellow through more neutral grays to a pinky colours. There are lots of tones in the sandstone brickwork of the barn that can be picked up. I have had to really delve to find a picture from the archives of an encounter with Hoggin,
That's more like it - obviously Castle Howard isn't the inspiration for our small corner of Herefordshire but here I have lifted a picture of some young Crossley boys (including myself in the heady days of my early 40s) enjoying the satisfying crunch of well laid Hoggin.
Once the desire to Hogginate takes hold it is all consuming, It sort of made sense to go "shit or bust" and get all of the paths and patios that make up the new formal area laid in one foul swoop. Turning back to the plan it was possible to draw a big a red line around all the new "built" areas and select 4 of "Sam the Lands" items. Basically the area for the raised beds and greenhouse, the long path, the new patio area and the reshaping of the drive from the turning circle down to gates with our neighbors in the Manor House and Cottages (not the main driveway). It is a wonderful project and to my mind the best way to "break the back" on a lot of what we need to get done. It does mean the removal of some big "lumps" of awkwardness like the poolhouse. There is a degree of guilt around this as it provides good roosting and nesting opportunities for birds in its ivy and honeysuckle. There will be plenty of set-offs in time with new hedges and native trees and shrubs going in. Steps will be build, paths and lines carved out and the first forms of the overall plan literally stamped into the Herefordshire hill we perch on.
I cannot believe that in 6 short weeks we will have been in the place for a year. For my part I have not spent any great length of time at the property but for Jane it is pretty much home now for the bulk of the year. As that anniversary turns we should have heavy machinery on site and a small "Groundforce" type army laying down hardcore, building steps, "hogginating" like mad and installing raised beds. It is beyond exciting and the before and after should be nothing short of miraculous. By taking on half the project in one go we variously draw all the edges to allow Jane to plan her borders and garden, install a working raised bed "Potager" to begin adventures in self sufficiency and define new seating areas and "lines" to pull the whole thing together. I really can now slow down and wait to see it come together as life seems to be galloping forward at a Emirates Airline weekend mercy dash pace at the moment.. It will be the first time we really "see" the plan even though it has been walked in our minds on a daily basis over the last few months. It all feels very grown up but then we did reach 50 !
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