Inspiration and help please

angeldaisy

I have a problem corner in my garden. There is a esb pole there and it has been used to dump soil, grass cuttings and stones.

I don't want to have to necessarily clear out the corner, but I was wondering if there was a relatively simple way to transform it. Possibly into a rock garden or water feature?

There is a small memorial garden in front of the area which has lots of wildflowers on, so I would be keen to keep that and maybe extend? I like a natural look rather than a pristine finish.

looksee

Where will you put the grass clippings if you don't put them there? Will you just be moving the problem? If the soil and clippings are leaning against the surrounding fencing they will rot fairly quickly, so you need to make a gap between the heap and the fencing. How about putting a fence in front of the area and use it as your compost/grass clipping area? Then plant something to grow up the fence to disguise it. I could not leave all those nice rocks doing nothing! sort them out before they disappear under weeds and grass :-)

looksee

Just out of interest I wondered whether a landowner has any responsibility for esb poles - by not stacking a compost heap around one for example :-) - and I cannot find any information at all, loads of stuff about the esb's responsibility but nothing about the public.

angeldaisy

It is only soil that is around the esb pole, you can't really see it in the photo, but there is a gap between the mound and the edge of the fence and the pole.

The grass clippings are usually put into either the composting bin or into a mulching area in my veg garden. My nephew dumped that lot there whilst we were on hols and he was cutting the grass!

I hope to use the stones as part of maybe a rockery for that area, all were dug out of the soil where my veg plot is now!

prospect

You have a few options there, made a bit more difficult because of the position of the pole & memorial garden.

Well, keeping it natural looking (to a point) I would start a lot further back along the fence on each side. Get a garden hose and lay it out making a random shape of long curves to cut the corner off the garden, (see pic, ignore crappy attempt at drawing curves).

Then I would remove the little fence from around the memorial, you could leave it without a boundary, or place some half buried rocks around it.

The area in the pic coloured blue could be planted out. In front of the pole you could place a large shrub like a forsythia, or else you could pin some chicken wire around the pole and grow a creeper up it, like honeysuckle.

In the rest of the planted area you could have a nice mix of heathers and lavender to the front and other shrubs to the back, dogwood & hornbeam etc. You could continue to put your grass clippings around the base of these as a weed barrier.

angeldaisy

Prospect, thanks very much for those suggestions.

I think I've a lot of thinking and planning to do!!