June to September 2009 - Site Clearance, new garden walls, a new entrance formed

June 2009      Just over a year after we bought the plot we start clearing the land in earnest.  We have to be so careful to protect the roots of the big beech trees at the top of the bank. It takes a long time.

We re-house several frogs and destroy some birds' nests in the process, it doesn't feel great to hack down all this vegetation.  We rescue some of the things we like best.

It will be great to put them back in the new garden.

My first little garden is soon obliterated. I don't know when it will be this green again. I've planted lots of sedum for the roof and these are moved to containers at the top of the garden.

The excavator arrives - I come home from work to find the digger has "jumped" a 3 ft wall and made a fair sized dent in the bank. 

It's the first time the fence is down and we can all see the area more clearly.

The bank seems bigger and wider than ever it did with the shrubs and plants. 

There's some lovley rock under there. 

.....and some enormous slabs

Lots of it makes retaining walls and steps for the back garden. 

We're very pleased with them.

We find an old stone trough buried in the bank, it's damaged but we incorporate in the terrace wall.

I'm shaping the wall to create a curved patio outside the kitchen doors.

At the moment there is just a big void where these doors will be - it's not so easy to imagine.

After building the walls there are hundreds of tons left, we can't store it up on the garden because we'd damage the tree roots so it has to go.

I try giving it away, I try selling it.  I end up selling 20 tonnes on ebay for 99p.

We have to pay for most of it be taken away.

Three months later we spend 6k on gravel to back-fill the ground floor at the back.....

September 2009     Eventually the digger goes through all the rock - which thankfully came out easily - and through to a layer of shale.

Our plot is finally ready for setting out.