Our garden, although not large, is very densely planted with fruit trees, two very large conifers, Virginia creeper, various ivy plants, a vine, a wisteria, a fig tree, and winter flowering forsythia. I'm sure when it was originally planted out it all looked absolutely wonderful, and the fruit trees are still very useful items, however, it has all got very badly out of hand and overgrown. All the climbers have gone totally wild - mainly all over the shed - and the fruit trees do need a good pruning. Last week I got a gardener in to give a quote for just generally thinning out and tidying up the back garden. He quoted £500 for what he thought would be two or three mornings work - I think not. I, probably foolishly, had envisaged someone quoting £200 tops, maybe £250 at a push. We're not talking garden redesign here, just a fair bit of pruning and cutting back.
Saturday afternoon saw me and my trusty Asda Value secateurs making a start on what will be a fairly mammoth task in the next couple of months but I'm blowed if I'd pay out £500 to tidy things up. I started on one of the long sides of the shed - probably about 12 foot long - and started hacking and chopping away. I'd only intended to do a bit but before long I'd filled the wheelie bin completely (luckily today was garden waste collection day - it's once every fortnight), and had amassed a large pile of cuttings on the grass too. I've just been out and chopped all those up into little bits and have filled the wheelie bin for a second time. I've pretty much cleared that side of the shed and I was surprised how much I enjoyed being out in the fresh air and doing something physical. Every time I got a bit fed up with bending, stretching, pulling or chopping up bits of greenery I kept reminding myself that I'm saving £500 by doing it myself.
On a totally different subject, I was very lucky recently to win a two-year notebook with a personalised slipcover from a giveaway over at Darling Petunia. This rather pretty and very useful item arrived on Saturday morning - I'm well pleased with it - thank you DP.
Well done with the gardening. I know the feeling about wanting to save money, labour is so expensive and most things we try to do ourselves.
Posted by: sharie | 03/09/2009 at 10:56 PM