Progress - Garden

December 2013

“You can’t have an omelette without breaking some eggs”. And we found this out to be very true during the renovations. There was so much rubbish that needed to be taken out of the house during the “de-construction” phase that the garden suffered unavoidable damage. Luckily we had already decided that some of the rose garden area would be converted to seating areas with a pebble surface, so rubbish was restricted to these areas before making its way to a skip bin for ultimate removal.

August 2014

Since the garden was being used as a “transfer station” for material coming out of the house during the de-construction phase, not much happened in this area until August when preparations were underway for the arrival of the Pans on Fire steelband. Since they would be using the garden area for eating, drinking and relaxing, the area was cleaned up and levelled in preparation for a load of pebbles to pave the area. A solitary rose was all there was left in the area.

After the area was levelled, Nico and I went in search of places which might sell gravel pebbles. We went to several garden shops but none of them had gravel for sale (unlike at home were we would just go to the local Bedrock Garden Supply store in Alexandra). Finally, we were referred to a stone quarry near Castelsarrasin which had stones of various grades (sizes). After checking in at the site office, we drove over in the yard to check out the sizes of the different options, and while we were there a guy drove across in a big front-loader to see what we were doing. I suspect he thought we wanted him to load something into a truck, but we only had Nico’s VW and that wouldn’t carry much. After he started making threatening hand signals, we decided to beat a hasty retreat. Since the delivery of the gravel was going to cost three times as much as the gravel (250e compared to 80e for 2 cubic metres), Nico started ringing around his friends to see if anyone had a 4t truck that was willing to do a delivery for a few boxes of beer. Unfortunately, no luck, so we had to get them to deliver the gravel to the house if we wanted the seating area before the band arrived the next week.

Unfortunately, after the truck had arrived and dumped 2 cubic metres on the road in front of the garden, and then departed, Nico realised that they had delivered the wrong sized gravel. It was too late to get them to come back and exchange it for the correct (smaller) size, even if they would, so the larger river gravel was spread on the seating area. At a later date, we may move some of this larger gravel to another area, and then cover the remaining large gravel with the smaller pebbles to give a smoother surface to the seating area.

By mid-August, members of the band were making good use of the pebbled seating area on most nights of the week.

October 2015

In late 2015, a major change was about to descend on the garden area. As shown above, in August 2014, the old metal framework was still is use for the rose arch walkway along the entrance path from the canal. This came to an end in 2015 with the arrival of a load of timber arches that Nico had been working on off-site. These soon started to take shape in the form of a new rose archway to the front gate.

November 2015

Within a month, the archway was nearing completion, to architectually complement the pergola (more on this later) that had been constructed on top of the adjacent garage.

November 2018

A couple of years later, the garden had softened and was a comfortable place to just sit and relax in the sun, under the watchful eye of a Gang-Gang Cockatoo sculpture created for the 2016 Barge Artz Expo held at La Maison.