Tech-free week-end for a new border

After visiting a friend’s garden on the Isle of Wight (Yes Sally, I’m talking about your lovely garden), I came back to the mainland full of inspiration to create a new border. Fortunately, I somehow infected Richard (Mr Flora’s Patch) with my motivation and we decided to have a go during the Bank Holiday week-end. Three days should be enough to create and plant a border, rebuild the low walls around two existing borders, start on the long-planned – since last summer- herb garden and mow the lawn as a finishing touch? Hhhhhmmm….

I can’t exactly remember how it happened but as part of the same conversation we decided unanimously that we spend too much time on our laptops. Before we realised what we were getting ourselves into, the gardening week-end turned into a tech-free gardening week-end. Doubting our will power, we actually went to the extent of unplugging the router so that no-one could have a sneaky look at their emails while the other was busy planting a Petunia, oblivious to the abominable treachery.

Day 1 – Saturday

Our first mistake – although I do not think it counts as a mistake because we had a lovely time- was to invite some friends for lunch in the garden. Great company, good food, good wine, nice weather and well, we were still at the table at 4pm. By the time they left we were kind of tired. We made a half-hearted attempt at digging the border, a bit of weeding and pruning here and there, but our progress was slow and then we kind of crashed, had a little lie down in the grass and before we knew it, it was tea time.

On top of our blatant lack of results, we didn’t even get to read our email or go online, so we were suffering from withdrawal symptoms.

This is what the new border looked like at the end of day 1. (Oooops…)

 

Day 2- Sunday

Invigorated by a beautiful blue sky and feeling slightly guilty about the day 1 fiasco, we made an early start. Some were earlier than others. Richard was out there digging by 7am. I joined the team around 9.30am.

By lunchtime, the border shape I had designed with the yellow hose was dug up, a couple of Hydrangeas were in, looking undeniably happier than they did in the pots they overgrew years ago.

Lunch in the garden, a quick nap under the birch tree and back to work.

Around 3pm, I started to suspect that we didn’t have enough sorry-for-themselves-in-their-pots plants so we nipped to Haskins to buy a Japanese Anemone called ‘Wild Swan’ that I had been coveting. We came back with the Anemone, a strange looking blue grass trying to make an impression of Simon Gallup 1986 hairstyle and a pack of six herbs to make a start on the herb garden.

At the end of day 2, the results were more satisfactory.

 

Day 3- Monday

Monday dawned cold and windy. Adding to the un-inspirational weather, we were pretty tired from what was a pleasant but exhausting Sunday. Our morning efforts were not particularly energetic and we got side-tracked before lunchtime, with a trip to Winchester to buy garden furniture. We managed to gather one last reserve of vigour in the afternoon, replacing the borders’ walls of collapsed stone with a tidy tessellation of salvaged old bricks. After this we were as collapsed as the old stones, but we could finally crash into our new garden sofas and admire the result of our hard week-end of work. The herb garden will have to wait until next week-end and mowing the lawn wasn’t that urgent anyway.

As for the tech-free trial? It was tough at the beginning but by Monday night we had almost forgotten that Internet existed and we have now decided to have tech-free Sunday every week.

I wonder how long THAT’s going to last…