And so it begins...

Wild garlic, down by the bridge at Tanhouse Brook

This blog started as a blog about a garden. Inevitably, after the fire, it became a blog about a garden, and a burnt down house. This week, saw the beginning of the next stage of rebuilding that burnt down house - Betley Court, namely, removing the rubble. We’ve appointed a specialist company, Buildzone, to take on the task of removing tonnes and tonnes of ash, and building debris from the ground floor and cellar. To give you some idea, the ground floor (in the places where it hasn’t crashed through to the cellar rooms) is 5-6 feet deep in ash and rubble. It’s going to take some clearing!

We took the decision to sacrifice the Peace Garden for the time being, so we can create an operations HQ, staff office, kitchen and toilet block. That way, we keep most of the activity associated with the rubble/rebuild removal in one place, and off Court Walk as far as possible.

Our new site offices, located in the Peace Garden

The delivery lorry, one of two, complete with on-board crane

The site offices that will house operations HQ arrived on Tuesday. They were lifted off the lorries with cranes and installed surprisingly quickly! They’re made from converted shipping containers, and painted battleship grey. One is kitted out with a kitchenette, table and chairs, and the other as office space. A dedicated loo block arrives next Tuesday and it’ll be connected to the main sewerage (which I’m very relieved about – no chemical loos to empty!).

Shane and Melvyn saved a few choice specimens from the Peace Garden before the site offices arrived. We’ve transplanted some roses, and I’ve my eyes on a couple of acers that I hope to plant down by the visitors’ hub before Buildzone arrive on site. And the Peace sculpture has been put into storage for the time being.

The Bluebell woods, just going over

Elsewhere, the gardens are looking lovely. The leaves are coming out on our beeches and oaks, and the bluebells are just starting to go over. You can smell the wild garlic before you see it in this breezy weather, and its rash of stellate white flowers bring a welcome haze of brightness to the shaded bridge across Tanhouse Brook.

A windflower - or woodland anemone, outside the hub

We have a bald area of ground by the visitors’ hub. In February, Paul the digging contractor grubbed up the tree stumps for us, then smoothed over the earth, leaving a nice flat area outside the hub. Sadly, apart from a few plucky daffs and bluebells, that have forced their way through the compacted soil, nothing is growing there.  I’ve begun sowing hedgerow and woodland wildflowers, and woodland grass species that will cope with shaded conditions. This is a bit of a drawn-out process, as I have to break up the soil pan, a rock-hard layer of earth. Luckily, I have just the right tool for the job, an antique ‘aerator’. I’m not sure how genuinely antique it is (the head is held on with modern ‘trade gold’ screws) but it works like a dream.

The right tools for the job; rake, aerator and a bag of grass seed

The three prongs on it are arranged like claws, and by drawing them across the soil, the prongs dig in like talons, tearing into the soil and breaking into a crumbly surface. I suppose it’s the hand tool equivalent of ploughing. The result leaves a surface I can sow seed on. I broadcast the seed – that is, I take a handful and shake it onto the soil as evenly as I can, to the rate of a teaspoon per m²  (fun fact - this is where we get the word broadcasting in the sense of news and TV broadcasts – scattering or distributing over a wide area). To ensure the seed is in close contact with the soil, I tamp the surface down, either by flattening with a rake head, or more usually, by shuffling along the sown area with my big gardening boots on. Then I lightly rake over the surface, and water in. The rest is up to Mother Nature, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a nice mix of sunshine and showers for the rest of May! In the meantime, I leave you with a short video of the process:

All best wishes

Ladybird Su