Garden Conversion

after the weeds have been cleared

I have finally decided to do something about the state of my back garden.
The people here before me put down wood bark as a way of keeping the weeds down. Sadly its just not very nice - it looks dark, its mostly damp, and it disappears at a surprising rate given I never see any on the path and its an enclosed garden. I don't understand why its so patchy even though I have topped up the amount of bark a few times already.
Grass would be the best solution, but the poor quality soil would mean I should get topsoil and turf it. If I was going to that effort then I should do the front also but there are buried cables and old tree roots to consider... Of course, I would also have to cut it.

While walking around the garden centre with Fiona I saw some nice granite chips which I thought would make a nice replacement for the bark. This thought coincided with one of the nice days we had. Due t the horrible condition of the bark we don't like to sit out on it  but that corner of the garden tends to get the afternoon sun. A plan was hatching.

removing the old membrane

Ciaran and Fiona measured out the garden and Ciaran then designed a suitable garden for me. Sadly his design was a bit beyond my plans for the moment - water features, split levels and £2500 worth of gas barbeque seems a bit much for 30m² back garden.
I figure if I get the chips delivered mid week, Ciaran and I can have the old bark and membrane lifted and cleared, and the fence painted, new membrane down and the chips added without really stretching ourselves. After all, it is our holidays.

After checking the website I decided that 2 tonne of chips will be enough to cover the garden.

We start out by clearing the weeds. Fiona and I had cleared the worst of them a few weeks earlier but they grow like weeds.

Once that was all done we tackled the bark. Luckily I had a good supply of charity donation bags that we used to pack all the rubbish away. We ended up with a full car load of fragile plastic bags full of bark, stone, and weed roots. I have never seen so many roots at once. Some of the garden looked like a plate of spaghetti had been spilled.

new membrane down

We then took the opportunity to give the fence a quick lick of paint. Sadly the fence is so fragile it won't take too much pressure so it wasn't a great paint job but it does look a bit better. As I share the boundary fences with 4 other houses there is no chance of getting all 5 households to agree to replace it any time soon.
The sheets of membrane were then rolled up and dumped into the bin.

At this point Ciaran noticed what appeared to be a ring of some sort. As he investigated it turned out to be the old anchor for the rotary clothes dryer. The previous owners didn't move their old one, just cut it off level with the top of the concrete and lay the membrane over it. we then decided to remove it, something easier said then done, especially with sandy soil and no levers. As we couldn't get a good grip of it I finally got some old CAT5 cable which was laying about and hauled it out with that. The power of the internet. Of course, we now have a huge hole which we filled with some attempts to level the surface. We also have  a stonking great big lump of concrete that I cannot lift to get into the car and if I could I wouldn't be able to get it back out!

The new membrane then went down. This was the first test of Ciaran's measuring as we had bought just enough to cover the area. Naturally I had forgotten to consider the overlap and we were a bit short, but there was some left from fixing the path at the front of the house so we were fine. Ciaran was relieved that his numbers were right.

serious rabbit problem

Thursday morning the stones arrived in 1 tonne bags on pallets. Luckily the driver managed to get them down the drive which meant we didn't have too far to haul them.
Ciaran was chief lugger and I was on loading. It took only a few hours to move them all onto the membrane and then we managed to level everything out reasonable quickly after that.

This is when I realised my mistake with the gravel order. I naturally overcomplicated it.
A bulk bag would cover between 10m² at 40mm depth and 12m² at 50mm depth. I converted these to a volume and then used my garden area to determine how deep the layer would be. Since the minimum depth would be 30mm I ordered 2 bags. Had I been less clever and just used the info provided - 10m²or 12m²at at least 40mm depth I would have realised I needed at least 2.5 bags to give around 40mm at their worst case scenario. The whole area is covered, but its only a single stone thick in some places. The end result is I'll need to get another bag to put down at some point. The current plan is to wait until next spring. Since its just sand underneath I feel the stone may compress the ground  a bit and then I may want more than just an additional single bag. In the meantime we have moved the picnic table of the drive an onto the 'patio' .

Then the table was christened with a cold beer.

all we need now is weather