Learning to garden

I’ve spent the past two Saturdays out in the garden. It’s one of my new year’s resolutions to learn all about what to do and how to do it in our jardin magnifique – hopefully I, with the help of my wife (and her parents who have been great already) will be able to turn both our back and front gardens into something to enjoy instead of the eyesores that they are now.

We’ve got a very big, old tree standing at the back of our garden and the whole area around it looked very messy. When I took a better look I found that the tree had lots of little bushy branches low down and no discernable trunk – from my very limited knowledge I think this must have been due to somebody cutting it back and not paying much attention to it afterwards, causing a mass of small branches and shoots to appear. So I set about it with my loppers and removed what seemed to be a massive pile of branches and twigs but leaving a tidy cut-back tree. I’m hoping that I didn’t cut back too much and do the tree any harm – I had a quick look on the web and in a basic gardening book we had lying around the house and the rule-of-thumb seemed to be focused around not cutting too many of the branches off as a whole so I guess it will be okay. I hope it will be okay!

So far over the past week we’ve cut the tree back, added a bird-box to our other large tree, put some nut and seed dispensers up (which the birds are just loving), removed two reasonably deep-rooted plants, cut back another very old and scraggy tree, cleaned out our water butt and de-mossed some guttering. I’ve also invested in a copy of The Complete How To Be A Gardener by Alan Titchmarsh (an absolute bargain from Amazon.co.uk) and a small pair of binoculars to watch the birds! Exciting stuff. I’ll try and keep you updated with how it goes. Any tips appreciated!