Wonderful New Garden

Did I ever come home to a surprise last week. While I was in Asia, A. singlehandedly finished most of the landscaping work and re-laid a new lawn, out in the garden.

About a week before I left, we had a truckload of topsoil (about 14 cubic metres' worth) dumped in our driveway. By the time I got back, it had all disappeared, save for a small pile. A. used it mostly to even out and raise the overall level of our existing lawn, which was in a pretty poor state and full of moss and weeds. Once the surface was limed and the new topsoil spread out, he then re-seeded - remarkably, this was done just two weeks ago! After plenty of daily watering, the new grass sprouted after just four days, and it had its first mow over the weekend. It's growing far more quickly than I would have imagined.

Here are some of the results:


Where the two sections of brick pathway intersect in the above picture, there used to be a large hedge. A. dug most of that up and replanted it up the slope, in the first terraced level visible (the next step up is the new, flat level of our driveway, which used to slope down to just behind the original position of the hedge). The result is that we have gained a bit more lawn on this side of the garden, as well as a nice wide new flowerbed which gets a lot of sunshine.

A couple other views:


In the picture below, you can see more of the work A. did with the grey stone landscaping bricks (which just need their capstones fitted before they are finished).


I think it all looks great - a huge improvement over what we inherited when we bought this property. I'm really happy with it.