I am starting a brand new garden from scratch

I hope you do that Alexa, you won`t look back and we would love to see your progress too

Weedlings are starting to grow where weeds were poor so that tells me that the soil structure is improving. I cannot dig all over, I can only dig deep for the bigger plants individually. The soil on top fortified with humus will be fine for the shallow rooters, eg thyme is growing beautifully.

I dug some allotment comfrey bocking 14 up last week and formed little stumpy plants, they are all growing with new leaves already, all 16 of them. I did a couple more yesterday. They seem to be growing so quickly, I added more humus to the 2 main comfrey beds, can only take a total of 11 plants, they need about 2` in between. I removed a barrow of big stones and roughly raked. I cannot see myself digging deep for these, my hip is more important right now, might just do a few post holes with an auger or slam the gorilla bar in for a wiggle but that will be all. I can see me planting these robust plants in 2-3 weeks

I love my trees and long grass. But I was thinking of offering my garden to able bodied gardening son to clear, rotivate, and grow veg and fruit on . for economic reasons concerned with climate emergency and maybe Brexit too.

Craftyone, I salute you.

Just reading about your new garden makes me breathless.

Well done, and as has been said previously, could we please have some pictures soon?

Do you still have the allotment or was that at your last house?

no I haven`t used the plant Alexa. Just the remedy symphytum to help broken bones to heal, not mine

So my 10th hole was finally dug yesterday and not a moment too soon, I very suddenly got bad hip pain in my right hip, I know it was all that twisting using the gorilla bar while kneeling. Body tells me that this is enough for now, I have many large stones to pick and get rid but no more forseeable deep digging and thank goodness for that. I will have to clean up the mess in the garage, where I dumped dirty tools and boots but not until the weekend

2 days on alternating painkillers will do it plus I must get back to long neglected core exercises to support my hip

Kneeling such a lot in the garden and close to the soil, I see that lots of weed seeds have germinated. It is going to be rough on my hoe, zillions of small and large stones. Worms are coming back very fast, they must be liking the added humus. There is no structure in my soil, not the structure that comes from generations of just being there, like on my allotment. All I can do now is add as much humus as I can and as often as I can

Phacelia is growing like the clappers in 3 raised beds and the leeks have all taken plus half the 2 year old shallots that I planted. At least I will have saved some shallots and will keep on growing a few of my own, have been doing that for 9 years from the original. There will be enough phacelia to feed some to the hotbin, the rain came at the right time

Two areas are ready now for bocking 14, either side of the hotbin and the other 4 can go into the far corner facing north west, gets some sun. If my comfrey does not root then I will have to buy some. Fingers crossed as there is satisfaction when successful propogation

Rest days for me now, body has taken a battering

Craftyone, have you ever used comfrey Bocking medicinally?
I used to know a healing woman who adored it.

5 1/2 hpurs later and I am stopping with that one hole. It seemed an ok one to start but I excavated 11 heavy buckets. These trees of mine will get the best start that I can manage. The posts are all securely in, 45 degrees for the potted trees and a vertical post for the bare root tree. Very thick posts and a lump hammer and crossed fingers

My 2 wheeled fantastic wheelbarrow has finally given up, the axle bent and I could not straighten it, good thing that I brought my single wheel barrow back from the allotment, will be destined for daughter. I cannot manage without my steady sturdy 2 wheeler, will be getting another one. 10 years of solid hard use, it did very well over all terrain and with very heavy loads

I snatched some food and copious drinks then took 2 ibrufen, I know I will ache for 2 solid days. I still have to do deep narrow holes for the comfrey, bought a cheap post hole auger and will fill the hole with soil. I regard my garden as any old soil on something equivalent to alkaline rock and that influences my planning.

The best garden for a new build without lawn is hard surfacing and raised beds. Its very tough going right now, I hope my fruit appreciates it and rewards me handsomely in time

The new patio has been started, hardcore is down and I think it will be finished in 2 weeks. 2 patios soon, at right angles, the new one is east/west and will be an extra 9 x 30 feet. I will have 2 patios that size, different sort of gardening for those areas. I have already made one nice, more intimate, enclosed area outside my kitchen. All future proofing for me, grey granite colour, bumpy stone that absorbs water so will not be slippy in winter. A whole new design concept in the future but not now, I need to get on with prep for the planting season

A couple more trips to my allotment last week, more equipment came back with me and also a lot of slightly under-ripe bardsey apples but fine for cooking for the freezer. I hate peeling hundreds of apples, like to start early. I have a traditional apple store unit for all the good apples

The last deep wide hole to be prepped today, so far each hole has involved removing 8-10 x 12 litre trugs of nasty mank. I have started to buy and keep john innes number 3, to give my apples a good gentle start. Takes 2-3 hours per hole and makes my hands ache for a couple of days. No pain no gain

I dug into comfrey bocking 14 roots on the allotment yesterday and have 16 bits for propogation, had to throw the roots out and used top pieces after cutting the stalks right down. Now all in recycled pots and will grow on until signs of life. In the meantime I need to decide the absolute final positions of my comfrey patches because they can never be moved. Such a beautiful valuable plant and bumble bees love it. I might treat it as a garden addition as well as a feed-maker and put it into 4 different places. So wonderful, it does not move its feet and remains where I plant it. Deep roots so I need to go as deep as possible but thankfully not wide as for the apples

The 2 allotment Ben Conan will be going to a dd, who is now in 3 acres, garden part is lovely, semi-wild and ramshackle, she wants the blackcurrants and a gooseberry. How on earth do I quickly teach a never before interested dd about gardening when it has taken me over 65 years of learning, starting with an adopted aunt saving me cigarette cards. Auntie Bess, are you listening? Thank you for my lifetime hobby

Craftone, you certainly are tenacious and I'm sure Mother Nature will reward your hard work with wondrous displays of flowers and fruit. I wish I could see them. It's a pity I cannot see photos of it all on Facebook.

Have you favourite HT roses?I love scent. Some floribundas have plenty of scent. I have a Korrezia that has that wild rose scent. I like yellow roses.

They are small builders Alexa, would not have buried anything nasty and probably thought I would be ok with 30cm of their top soil, as long as I was having grass it would have been ok but I am not a grass person. I will be patient and am heeling bought plants into troughs until I can prep their homes properly. It will be done by autumn, I am tenacious but need to pad my palms inside my gloves

So far the flowering/foliage plants I have bought for the back in 3s
rudbeckia goldsturm
monarda jacobs cline
artemesia powys castle

plus 7 varieties of creeping thymes in a kind of circle around a water feature plus 3 mounded thymes in that circle

For height and fruit I have ordered
3 x M26 eating/cooking apples
1 x M26 jelly king crab apple
3 x standard invicta gooseberries
2 x blackcurrant Ben conan

All I can see me wanting to add are some of my bocking 14 comfrey roots and to move 6 nice roses

Bulbs will be added when the permant planting is done

Could you get the builders to pay for removing their rubbish? Don't you own the subsoil? What if the builders had buried something really nasty?

I could scream tonight, I have spent hour upon hour clearing nasty builders rubbish from below the layer of soil. Two days on a small bit of the front and pretty well all day today, trying to make sure that I have a decent home for my fruit. Three of the trees arrive in 4 weeks and the rest a bit later. The builder buried nasty sticky stuff that is like plasticine, at first sight the soil looked ok and is deeper than nhbc stipulates but below the soil is a deep nasty very difficult and thick mound of, I think, render and many large stones embedded in it and it is in every place I have dug so far

My hand is almost blistered and my shoulder is strained. I have been on my knees by just one hole for three hours and taken out 3 barrows of this awful gunk. The trees need a big hole without obstructions, so tomorrow I am getting a strong prise bar, it is very difficult to get the deep big stones out

All nhbc require is 10 cm of top soil and landscaping ie grass. I have about 30cm of top soil and managed to stop them sowing grass seed. So many new home owners won`t realise about this until their lawns start to fail and go yellow in patches

PS I hope to remember how to preserve wood wooden posts if I ever need . Engine oil !

I might try ajuga Bugle Boy , thanks.

I hope you yourself are properly hydrated ?

yes ajuga survives very well and looks lovely, it wondered between lots of plants. Bugle boy is particularly nice with spires of blue flowers. I think I got small plants from ebay

I have given up with hydrangea annabelle in the front, it is far and away too sunny and dry, so I started prepping for a change of planting. I started at 10am and didn`t stop until 6. I never appreciated how manky the soil was that side, it was the side that the big machines came through. Soil structure was gone and more than that there were many pockets of dumped large stones, concrete, plaster, render. Yes again I shifted countless buckets of this stuff, luckily there is a builders area that has still not been cleared and I had permission to use it. All I had ever done was dig to a shallow level, pop the plants in and mulch with various humus. At least I found several worms this time. I ended up crumbling much soil by hand and have done half the area, tested it with a bucket of water, which now drained away

I had to take paracetamol and cbd last night, was so achy but to my amazement feel fine now. I want to get it done, so will make a start soon. It all started when I moved damp soil away from 3 fence posts that were put in concrete. I have experience of rotting wood so wanted to get the soil away, will paint the lower level with preservative and then lash with engine oi

So my new plantings will be with hot sun and drought in mind and I am talking about rosemary of various types, I have 3 upright on the way and one prostrate. 4 different types and I put my sad looking 3 year old pot bound rosemary in too. I have artemesia on the way too, may put these on the edge to divide from the roses. They have grey thin leaves

www.ecosia.org/images?q=ajuga

It looks like thyme. I'd like invasive. Maybe I could grow it on my ecological drive. Can it survive among sparse barley ?

I love that buddleia is so attractive to bees, I see a couple a few gardens away. I am waiting to see the water feature working soon, I want bubbles rather than a spout but it has a nice big water container so will be liked by birds.

Doh, I thought I bought a pot crammed full of chives, silly me they are obviously not chives but are leekes, I will dump 2 more bags of compost into a raised bed and plant them. My dibber was in the box that disappeared so I will have to improvise with a thick pointy dowel.

Got to start a veg rotation diary, I can do a 4 rotation cycle, to keep the soil healthy

I put the 3 creeping thyme out last night, they look well this morning, about 10" apart. I was reading about caraway thyme which is the only culinary thyme that I bought, apparantly it is pretty active, I`ll keep it at the back in case it takes over. I like the idea of easy ground cover. I used ajuga bugle boy in a contained area shared with a neighbour, it was wonderful, kept all the weeds down between the plants. Ajuga would be too invasive here

Phacelia has still not arrived, just as well as I got the leekes yesterday, 3 beds of phacelia and one bed of leekes

Oh yes, height matters in the overall effect. Thyme has self seeded in my gravel drive which never had weed membrane on it. My garden used to be a meadow and it must have been a barley field too as barley self seeded on the drive and looks pretty.
I'm guessing a solar water feature is powered by the sun to make a fountain.
Beeplants: my self seeded buddleia had four peacock and one unidentified (brown spotted maybe fritillary)butterflies yesterday.

I think I am making progress, hammered tall stakes in to show me where the apple trees go, strangely suddenly I see height appearing. I have decided to make a patch with mixed gound covering thymes, I ordered 8 variations x 3, so quick quick I need to uncover soil and stones and prep for them. I know where to put the thymes now, around a tall solar water feature, it looks as though that will be the focal point. I put the feature in place just now, looks nice. I put stone chippings in the base for weight

Three more trugs of stones ready for the tip. Ground is not bad, it certainly seems to have improved somewhat since I added some humus and ph is approximately 6.3. I think I will concentrate on herbs and bee plants. Perhaps rock roses instead of roses in the soil but the way this is evolving, I can`t say for sure

I copied this:

"Phacelia is a quick growing green manure so it can be grown after an early crop is harvested. ... It is most useful for early spring crops where the farmer wants the soil to warm quickly, and where a weed-suppressing residue is not needed."

The blue flowers look pretty rather like loveinamist.

I have 3 M26 apple trees on my 10` wide allotment, down the centre, 10` apart and the branches are all within the 5` each side. I can easily get to them for thinning etc. I think I took off 2/3 of the apples this year but it is worth it as the remaining apples grow large and healthier and the trees don`t get stressed

I must say that I am enjoying my time in my new garden. Tackling small parts in stages is working for me, the areas I have been working on down the side are very awkward shapes. Yet more buying and transporting today, in total today was 20 bags of various composts/soil, a bag of gravel and 3 more slabs. I feel that this carrying is making me strong but I do roll from the car into my sturdy 2 wheeled wheelbarrow

An area 3 x 3 slabs is now finished, was fiddly at times, stopping any wobble. There was another awkward trapezium space between them and the patio edge, too small for any planting. I had some tough straight rubber edging, sawed bits off that for containment. I put weed fabric down and mixed the gravel with some grit and covered the fabric. Looks pretty tremendous if I say so myself.

I put several bags of topsoil into the raised beds and they are now full enough, they are 10" high and very good solid beds, better than the ones I had previously. I am hoping phacelia comes tomorrow, I want to get it sown while we have some rain

Your slabs in sand sound good Alexa, mine are in soil. I definitely don`t want lawn and evolving is what is happening.

Working hard, Craftyone! NB you might need to replace salt as well as water.

My gardening ethos was labour saving plus seclusion. Thus I did not bed down my lawn- set slabs in sand byt merely dug some turf out to make them level. this has worked except where tree roots have raised them. This slabs I removed and did without, as the roots keep that square dry anyway.

Did you plant the apple trees 5 feet from boundary so you get all the windfalls , or for legal reasons?

I had no clue of the size of my back garden until now, I used one of those laser thingies. My patio is/will be at right angles ie 2 at right angles, like a set square. Patio area is 295 sq`

Main garden, presently covered in black weed fabric roughly 30 x 20 = 600sq`

Trapezium shaped hidden bit is roughly 192 sq`. I have to allow proportionately more waste for the house wall and footings

Tbh that is a good big area for a new build. My present allotment is 500 sq` and that includes shed, compost etc

One side of the back, north facing but it gets east/west sun in high summer is 30`. That pleases me because my new apples only need to be 5` from the neighbours fence, same as allotment centre and they never grow too big or too wide and there is always pruning. Now I have finally decided on the apple positions ie 5` from fence and 5`, 15` and 25` in a row. The 4th apple will be at right angles to the 5` corner apple at 10` from that apple. I did 10` spacings on the allotment and it is ample for that size rootstock, M26

This is all consuming because I don`t have much time left, trees and bushes will start arriving in september and I will move my own bushes in october. I cannot face having to organise the plantings in a hurry. I want to get posts in last week in august. Good job I found my lump hammer, the posts are good, long and very thick. I need to drive 4 posts in beforehand, at a low angle and then another 4 at the opposite angle. I need to buy 2 more posts, I bought 6 online and they are way superior to anything I can buy locally but p and p would make it too expensive

I did 2 full hours up on the allotment this morning, glorious wide sweeping view and silent apart from birds. I do need to get my arris in gear, just in case I get another car this autumn. I cleaned and I lifted and brought 37 bricks home, always useful for holding weed cover down and possibly for making a rugged path. A bin thing I bought from lakeland ages ago, you hang a bag of comfrey in it and add water and it makes liquid manna for plants, no more tomato fertiliser needed. Some tools and a watering can, plenty still there to enable me to keep my plot tidy

Hotbin is now emptied and was very full of black gold, now around roses, blackcurrants and on a bed which would be ideal for beans next year, a good start for a new person. I washed the hotbin and am hoping that son in law comes to fetch it soon. It stands on several 45cm slabs and I want to bring those slabs home, practical head says that I need to extend the hotbin area at the new house one row is not enough. Raking out today, on a kneeler and really I need 3 rows for comfort

My 3 allotment apple trees look wonderful now I have deprived earwigs of their cosy homes, in apple clusters. I like to do the thinning early and watch the earwigs fall down before they cause too much damage. There is one apple that I just have to have again, so I ordered it, only 10` tall. It is so disease resistant and stores very well most of the winter. I have an apple storage cabinet in my garage. The apple is pig skin sold by Ian Sturrock, not at all cheap counting postage but my word what a lovely apple, large and shiny. The one on the allotment is 5 now and laden with apples. I had some for 3 years so far, took all tha apples off in the first 2 years. It is a very neat solid little tree, very close to my blackcurrants and roses

Did I tell you that most of my precious gardening stuff `vanished` during my removals. I am having to start again

I admit to now being shattered and my body is doing its cooling job ie perspiring all over, cue is to drink an awful lot more water. So I could not sleep last night, head was full of that stuff with hidden meanings, going into a new job but being late, couldn`t find my things etc I gathered that this was the push I needed to get that very difficult trapezium shape sorted, all down the side of the house. Wonky up and down, yes there is soil but also horrid builders rubble

I had already bought and assembled 4 good plastic 1 x 1m raised beds but they looked such a mess wherever I placed them but I bear in mind that they are out of sight. Logic hat had to come on and I decided that the veg would need maximum sun, now placed in a line E/W measuring 4 x 1m, just 20 inches from the house wall. They looked like waves on the sea. 4 tall metal posts hammered at the 4 corners and string line near the ground parallel to the house. Beds temporarily moved away

Spirit level and rake out and what a difference that made once that line was in place. One at a time the beds were put in place with just a tweak here and there, helped by my spirit level. I am happy

By 9am this morning, dressed in mucky clothes from the allotment yesterday, I was waiting for a very old fashioned factory store to open, 12 miles away. They mix all sorts of bags of composts, soils etc. I bought 25 40litre bags of very good stuff and my car was laden to the top and groaning. I offloaded and started that soil work

At least 8 of those bags will go into the 4 beds and I will be sowing phacelia (green manure) as soon as it arrives. It will be ready by october and I will chop and lightly turn, then cover until spring and maybe then worms will return

That is the beds sorted but having experience of raised beds on my allotment, I need to allow 20" each side for kneeling. Last thing today, I will rake and smooth that space all around the beds, my aim is to cover with a doubled over length of non woven weed matting, the heavier one of 76g. I ordered non woven matting this morning, I always used it for paths on the allotment and 9 years later it was still reasonable. The 50g weight will be used to cover for winter

I am back out in a mo, have recovered some energy and drank 2 full glasses of water

oh I forgot to say that I have resited the hotbins, had to prep the ground for 6 x 45cm slabs. I put th slabs all in a line, bearing in mind that I have to keel and rake to get the compost out, hotbin and 2 kneeling slabs, repeat once. Raked, weed cover over and pretty reasonable non-wobbling slabs now. Don`t know what I would do without a rake and my spirit level and my sun hat