We do not want to wait five years to move into the steading and then stare at devastated ex-building site for the following years whilst a garden establishes itself. We will mix building with gardening. For example, our relatively short winter visits will be good times to prepare for planting and for landscaping. In the summer months we will do what we can to keep the grass, nettles and perennial weeds under control.
Hedging: The small Rowan trees we planted back in the early summer are thriving after their months of neglect – the tree tubes have done their stuff and the ground is clearly suitable.
So we plan to start a full hedge along the northern boundary and part of the eastern boundary, around 65m total. We want to get it in the ground in November. Hopefully this will be starting to look hedge-like and sheltering us from the north-west thru north-east by the time we move in.
We want the hedge to be nature-friendly, with season-round interest – we will not keep it closely manicured. It also needs to be not poisonous to the cattle and sheep down our eastern boundary. We have our eyes on a ‘Saxon Mix’ from Hattens Farm Nursery, Fressingfield, Suffolk. This is 50% Hawthorn mixed with Hornbeam, Field Maple, Bird Cherry, Cherry Plum, Spindle, Blackthorn, Common Dogwood, Common Privet, Alder Buckthorn, Common Buckthorn, Wild Pear, Holly, Dog Rose, Guelder Rose, Wayfaring, Hazel, Amelanchier Lamarckii, Crab Apple and Oak. We might look at less of the Hawthorn and more of the others, plus we do have some of our own cuttings of different species.
Finding Hattens was serendipitous, we came across an online catalogue of theirs by chance, they may be local to us but we did not know about them. Their prices are very reasonable. They import their stock from the continent starting end-October and have delivered orders to north-east Scotland.
As preparation, we had bought two 50mx2m rolls of weed membrane (‘heavy-duty woven weed control ground mulch landscape fabric’). One was enough to do the whole northern boundary and extend round the corner. We later used part of the second roll to carry on down the east side until we ran into a pile of granite rubble (the remains of the demolished steading internal walls). We strimmed the grass down a bit, then laid the membrane as close to the fencing as possible. We weighted the edges and middle with a selection of our ex-roof timbers.
We look forward with interest to seeing whether it has knocked back the grass by the time we get to plant the hedging. We did not have the time or materials to actually mulch the membrane – something we will probably want to do once we have it planted up.
A burning question: How long will it take to plant the 350 or so bare-rooted plants? We are hoping to take a long weekend in November, flying up on a Thursday evening & back on the Sunday evening, with three days solid on the ground.
Rhubard: Our Rhubarb is looking quite happy, still nestling in the two old tyres that we figured would protect it from the wind and undergrowth.
Rabbits & Hares: Earlier in the year we had a rabbit that looked as though it had been crossed with a domesticated bunny – it had interesting dark patches on it’s fur. No sign of this, I expect it was predated. We did, however, have a very tame hare & rabbit that kept a close eye on what we were doing throughout the fortnight. This rapid turnover of rabbits and hares is very typical of the area – we simply do not have a systematic problem with them. I expect this will change once we start providing them with cover, but we are expecting to protect our veg plots from rabbits and wind. We will also make sure we use tree guards on our hedging.
Geese: The geese appear to be year-round, flying pretty much daily between the Ythan estuary, Meikle Loch and Strathbeg.
Japanese Knotweed: The Knotweed had grown a lot from our May visit, but was not more than 3 feet high where it did not get sprayed the year before (because it was too tall). This was around 30 square metres. Where we did spray, there were a small number of small re-growths.
We left it a week and sprayed it just as it started flowering. It did drizzle and rain a bit later in the day, we will find out next time we are up whether it had long enough to soak in and do its stuff.