The courtyard is now full clear, and all of the excavation works are now completed which involved removing a massive 58 tons of waste materials. The footings are dug and the concrete lorry is booked for later in the week. 

The weather is still awful and this has hampered work in the courtyard and my business in general; grass isn’t growing, plants aren’t growing and we are still able to plant bare roots plants, carry on winter pruning and lots of other work normally reserved for December and January. These are very strange times and I honestly can’t remember another spring like this one. 

Global warming has made me overconfident about the British weather but as I write this I am wearing Thermals (top and bottoms), polo short, thick woolen socks, jumper and a thick pair of jeans. Having made plans for both my own garden and that of my clients this arctic blast has reminded me that I must never again take the weather for granted. 

Today my staff are spending the day in a small copse pruning and chopping wood for a client while I have completed my firms VAT return (which I hate doing) and then started to dig out our courtyard; the amount of soil that it is required to remove in order to lay paving never ceases to amaze me, and it is with regret that I load our lovely clay/loam into the skip having not been able to find another way of using it better. 

So far I have removed the awful concrete fencing, (a strange construction the like of which I have never seen before) demolished the wooden fencing, smashed up a rotten Wendy house and removed about 20 square meters of decking. All of the accumulated waste has filled a 16 yard skip and a 12 yard skip and I am now awaiting another skip which I very much hope will be the last. I have always been against land fill and in favour of recycling if possible, and the company we use for skip now recycles most of the waste it takes away which does easy my mind, although I still feel a little guilty about not being inventive enough to find a use for the rubbish. 

I am truly exited about my new project but unless the weather improves drastically it could be a long time before its finished!

Just finished my breakfast and heard an 18 ton lorry pull up outside the house. At last my Pleached Hornbeam had arrived and I quickly got outside and greeted the driver. These trees are large with a 2.4m clear steam with huge heads and root balled (also huge), and to be honest hugely expensive; is it worth the cost I asked myself and the answer is yes as I haven’t got the next 15years to spend growing and pruning hornbeam myself. I have bought and planted many large tree and specimen shrubs for clients over the years but this is the very first time I have made such a purchase, a kind of present for almost killing myself last year with the pressures of work!

At last the first lawn was possible over the weekend and the process is always signifies the start of spring to me; a few runs with the mower and the garden begins to look better and in turn I feel my spirits lift. I didn’t stop there as the rest of the afternoon was spent weeding in the warm sunshine which is a process I enjoy; some of my staff hate weeding but I really can’t understand why…perhaps its a case a simple things pleasing simple minds!