Burtonfield Gardens | Burtonfield Gardens

Autumn – time for garden design…

mwindsor — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 15:07:08 +0000

On our to-do list for this autumn is to redesign the secret garden, so that we can do any work required over the winter in the hope of having it ready for lounging in next summer.

Have just been out and in principle, have an idea for the hard landscaping, so next step will be to mark out and live with the marked out design for a while to make sure its right.

Have taken a few photos to assist, but have also been playing with 360 Panorama, so here is the gardens current layout.

Click on my name to see some more panoramas of other parts of the garden and to view panoramas in full screen mode.

BTW, its the secret garden since when we first moved in there was a huge conifer where the railway sleepers are now, which blocked the view to most of the garden. Less secret now, but the name has stuck!

Common Darter

mwindsor — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 15:04:55 +0000

Though we have a hard time taking photo’s of the dragonflies in the garden, this one on a recent visit to the Ouse Washes was sunning itself and was easy enough to snap.

Common Darter we think…

A new start, a new look and feel…

mwindsor — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:36:13 +0000

OK, I’ll be honest – I (Malcolm) spend most of my time with the technology in the house while Jenny spends most of her time in the garden.

In an effort to have more crossover, I’m going to attempt to put more effort into this blog, which may over time transition into a much more photo-laden experience (once we get our digital SLR workflow sorted!)

In preparation, we’ve moved from Blogger to WordPress.

Catch up soon!
M.

New dwarf iris…

mwindsor — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 16:31:00 +0000

…bought this weekend to brighten up an alpine trough which was looking decidedly grey. (Iris reticulata ‘George’)

Rabbit at dawn…

mwindsor — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:29:00 +0000

…yes, M. managed to be up early enough to “shoot” this rabbit in the early dawn light…next time it will be the rifle!

Winter colour in the garden

mwindsor — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:47:00 +0000

Winter colour in the garden
Originally uploaded by burtonfield

Jen took this great shot last weekend.

Burtonfield in Bloom

mwindsor — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:39:00 +0000

Just to show that we can do tasteless planting with the best of them…here is our “bit of fun” for this year with a complete mashup of annuals in the roundabout…

…not quite the same as our much more restrained and styled “hosta walk” (work in progress…its only half a walk at the moment!)….

Burtonfield in 3D

mwindsor — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:55:00 +0000

Having discussed the Google Sketchup program at work, I decided I’d have a go at putting together a model of Burtonfield…. MK I can be seen here:

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=1cc6ccbce0f41e3855608dab83338198&prevstart=0

There is a link on this page to open the model in Google Earth.

Not many doors or windows at the moment, since I need to take some photos of the house to use as textures, but its a start!

Planted…

mwindsor — Sat, 31 May 2008 06:43:00 +0000

I last updated you with the conifer we’d removed from the roundabout, well this has now been planted…looking forward to seeing what it looks like when it fills out!

This is very much a temporary feature, since we plan to convert the whole of this area to a “parterre” garden, and indeed, are thinking about a possible formal sunken pond where the roundabout is at present…

Also took this snap of the statue we’ve christened “Jeanette”, surrounded by the beautiful show of white foxgloves we’ve got at the moment.

Gone….at last.

mwindsor — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 07:13:00 +0000

Last month we finally got around to digging out the conifer which had been blocking our view of the rest of the garden for 6 years! Such a key moment, that its inspired us to come back and update this poor neglected blog….

The tree in question was planted in the roundabout in our drive. I’m afraid if you haven’t seen it, you’ll have to imagine it (…were weren’t digital then…). Needless to say, it was a boring green conifer which had grown too big for its boots…as tall as the gutters on the house.

Having cut down most of the tree, we left a stump of around 4′ high to ensure we had something to lever against or tie a truck too if needed! The 2′ to 3′ diameter stump then stayed that way for several months – we were particularly successful in avoiding that job.

Finally, after I’d had a little go at digging it out, when Janet was over, she and Jen dug around the tree to give us some working space, cutting the roots as they came across them.

Having blunted chain saw blades in the past when working near soil, I decided to use our electric “reciprocating” saw to cut the remaining roots (…to be honest we’d bought it on a bit of a whim and not used it for anything else). This worked really well, and I was able to free up enough of the roots to push over the trunk, and then saw off as many roots as I could from the base….we needed to make this thing lighter!

Eventually the trunk was “rollable” and so having used a jack to lift raise it slightly, we levered it out of the whole, for it to land on the tarmac with a thud (and making a big dent….nevermind, we’re not keeping the tarmac long term….).

We rolled the trunk off into the bushes:

and then examined the crater:

Having filled this, and levelled, its now ready for planting!