One major tidy up gone mad.

Over the last few months, my poor front garden has taken quite a battering. One of the local kids has taken up free running and travels up the street through the front gardens and over the walls as though they are hurdles. The local school kids have dropped their litter as they congregate en mass on their way to the nearby school, and most of it has blown in to my poor unprotected patch. The local cats have scratted in it, as they tend to do.

You could say that it is looking a little bit worse for wear.

Since the sun was shining, and it is my Dad’s birthday today, I decided to celebrate by giving the patch a makeover and tidy up.

General weeding, and pruning of the wayward ivy ensued. The musk mallows were cropped back, and seeds shaken about. Dead stuff was removed, and the rubbish picked up.

The central bed has been looking really untidy. It needed re-defining as the bricks I used to mark it out had been stamped in to the ground by our local athlete. I hoped that I would have enough cobbles left over from doing the path and edging the patio, but I didn’t quite. I did find a brick that was about the right thickness which I decided would do if I placed it where the ivy tends to grow over the bed. Let’s face it, anything would be an improvement, so I set about and re-edged it.

Next I scooped out as much of the gravel that had got in to the soil as I could and dressed it with some of the topsoil I still have spare from the back garden.

The local market has a flower stall that sells wallflowers in bunches of approximately 10 for a quid, so having bought two bunches earlier, I proggled them in.

Then I tidied up the bed under the gas meter, and planted 3 deep red cyclamen under it. This bed never gets any sun, although it is not in deep shade either. It is also very dry, as the gas meter box over hangs it and shades the soil from direct rain. The creeping Jenny seems to survive all right there though, and as cyclamen like to be dry, I thought these might stand a chance. Only time will tell.

Finally I sprinkled the left over red gravel on top of the old ‘tired’ gravel bits. Not only does it smarten up the whole look of the garden, but it gives a nice contrast to the green foliage, and makes the garden ‘pop’.

It does not look neglected any more, and I can feel proud of it again.

Job well done :-)