Creating a walled garden from scratch

Garden transformation Part 6 – The south facing wall

The ‘Great Wall’ is what it’s become jokingly known as. It starts in the front at 3ft high, runs for over 65ft. Then goes up to 6ft high and runs for a further 160ft to the end of the garden. It’s a south facing boundary, so we knew from the moment we moved in that we wanted to grow fruit on it. We both love walled gardens, more than any others and so set about the ambitious task of creating one.

With the small exception of our 80ft long holly hedge, which has to stay for the birds and wildlife.

When we moved in the boundary consisted of approximately, one third open fence panels, the next third a leylandii hedge that was over 10 feet wide. The last part, a mix of all sorts, including quite a lot of holly at the very end.

All of our priorities in the garden revolved around getting food production up, running and maturing whilst we carried on with the decorative side of the alterations. This meant ‘the great wall’ went to the top of the list as we wanted to get the fruit trees planted as quickly as we could.

The building materials arrive

The first of many building supplies arrived. Our front garden has not been free of packs of brick and dumpy bags since. We’ve had so many deliveries over the last seven and a half years, we’ve got to know the delivery drivers from Huws Gray, Travis Perkins and Wickes. If we’re not in, they know exactly where to place the goods. Spot on!

Easter bank holiday delivery from Travis Perkins

Let the wall begin!

We started to build it in May 2014 right by the house. The first part of the wall is built using buff coloured bricks, whilst the rest is built in red bricks. This is to distinguish between the patio area and the rest of the garden. This first section was finished by July (remember I’m not a trained bricky). The weather wasn’t exactly kind to us either, resulting in the purchase of a couple of cheap gazebos – we didn’t stop for a bit of rain!

The Front Wall

As our next door neighbour had taken the front hedge out before we moved in. The obvious thing to do next was carry on from the back of the house, down the side and all the way to the front hedge. This felt positively easy as it was only 3ft high, so the 65ft stretch was finished by September 2014 and we started on another raised bed in front of it – you may have noticed by now that I like a raised bed.

I didn’t get to finish this bed though until the beginning of March 2015, as in October I had to have my perforated appendix removed- very inconvenient!

Back to the rear

By March we were desperate to get the shady wall on the other side of the garden finished. As there was so much growth on that boundary that the birds nested in, we knew if we didn’t do it now we’d have to leave it until August. With this, we decided to get a bricky in to do the next 25ft section of the Great Wall, whilst I carried on with the shady side.

It was lovely how quickly he did that next section, and even though my husband and I still dug and concreted the foundations, I’ve since felt sad that we didn’t do the whole thing ourselves.

Down to the far end

By April the bricky had got the great wall far enough away from the house, giving us and our next door neighbours’ privacy again. We then decided to start building at the very end of the garden and work our way back up.

Whilst I was still busy finishing the shady wall, my husband finally cleared all the debris from the bottom, (no mean feat) and by June we’d started building at the end.

We finally saw the very end of the garden

Near the very end we decided to incorporate a log store into the wall. We built this section with large hollow 9″ x 18″ concrete blocks, later filling them with re-enforcing and concrete. Obviously my labourer (husband) lifted them into position, with guidance form the bricky come forewoman (me).

Joining of the wall

We cracked on really well that year and on August bank holiday we dug the final section of foundations, ready to join the two ends up. Of course being bank holiday in rained for most of the weekend, but the great benefit of living on top of an ice age glacier, sand and gravel deposit, is the water drains away almost as fast as it comes down.

This doesn’t however stop you from getting very wet! We’d no sooner started concreting than the rain came down again. There was no stopping now, resulting in a very damp miserable session. Reflected in the face of the concrete leveller.

Back to the brickying and the great wall was finally joined in September. The weather improved and we were able to build into October.

2016 Start, stop, start again

Back to it in spring 2016 and I did a very silly thing, rather than setting up the scaffolding, I decided to work off the ladder, twisting badly. Unfortunately as I’ve been plagued with a bad back since my teens and let face it, I’d been pushing my luck ever since we moved in. I finally succumbed to a bad session of sciatica, resulting in 6 weeks not able to work and a long gap off wall building!

Lesson learned? Probably not…..

August. Hurray, I’m finally allowed my trowel back to lay a few bricks in the newly dug out (not by me) pond.