Six on Saturday – 3rd May 2024

A bit of a cheat on this bank holiday weekend, as we are away, so I am sharing some pictures taken through the week. Knowing we would be away and given that I had an unusual period of relative calm at work, I took a day off mid-week to take Soggy Bottom in hand. Soggy Bottom is the sunken garden at the very end of our garden. The previous owner dug and built (by hand!) a swimming pool for his kids. By the time we moved in, the kids were adults, the bottom of the pool had cracked due to a neighbouring ash tree’s roots, and the whole thing did not hold water and would have been something of a death trap if it did, not to mention being a real eyesore. As soon as I saw it, my first thought was to partially fill it with soil and create a damp shade garden. The neighbours had some earthworks done, so we took their spoil off them and I enriched pockets of it with home compost and leaf mould for planting holes. It is now a rich moist green oasis, albeit one that floods occasionally due to being very low-lying and next to a stream. In fact, it’s a little too successful, and if I don’t take it in hand at least twice a year it turns into a jungle and the paths and pond in it disappear completely. Here are a few before and after shots (admittedly not a huge difference, but the paths have at least been regained) plus a shot of me standing in the pool when we first moved in. The Under-Gardener was a bit dubious about being outside in the damp cool grey weather, but he did deign to keep an eye on the equipment and supervise from a distance for a bit.

Our Six on Saturday host Jim and the rest of the gang can be found here: https://gardenruminations.co.uk. swing by and have a nose at what’s growing all around the world, you’ll be glad you did!