17 July 2025 – Barking away
One of the final steps was to put a nice ground covering down over the membrane – we originally planned to put down Mountsorrel pink granite chippings, but finding these at a decent price and with bulk bag delivery (deliveries to our garden aren’t easy!) proved too difficult, so we went with bark chipping instead – not our first choice but still nice.
16 July 2025 – Triumphal archway
To celebrate our entry into the world of home grown vegetables we have built a triumphal archway – if it’s good enough for Paris, then it’s good enough for Mountsorrel!! We picked this up from Gates Garden Centre as they had an offer on – we’re suckers for a bargain 😉
July 2025 – Under pressure!
As we had chosen seep hoses to irrigate each bed, one thing we found was that we struggled with getting the pressure from the water butts to work them effectivly. Luckily on one of our MANY visits to B&Q in nearby Loughborough we saw a Bosch battery pack powered garden hose pump on offer that was designed to fit into water butts (Bosch 18v-2000Solo)!! PERFECT!! This was quickly installed and the hoses immediately started irrigating as they were meant to via a Hozelock 4-way hose switch to enable us to selectivly switch the water supply to individual beds on and off 🙂
8 June 2025 – Our first crop is growing!!
A momentous time! Our first crop of onions, potatoes, carrots, leeks and corn is in and growing! We found some metal arched framework whilst clearing the garden and these are now protestng the spuds! We found some flexi tubes online and have also made a frame to cover 3 other beds, the corn gets a tall open topped frame to allow it to grow to full height.
7 >18 April 2025 – Yet More beds, irrigation and weed control
After placing the first 3 beds we realised that we had quite a bit more space to fill so we ordered up a couple of smaller 1m x 1m beds to fill the gap. Once the layout was set, we buried a series of hoses hooked up to a Hozelock 4 way tap so we could irrigate the area automatically in the future from our water butts. Once these were down we installed a weed control membrane over the area between the beds and up the insides of the wooden frames to protect them a bit. The beds had been laid over a full covering of the weed control membrane, but we cut this away inside them to allow for better drainage. The base of each bed area was covered in a thick layer of cardboard, thanks Wren! 😉 (remembering to remove any plastic tape etc. first) and then topped up with a mixture of compost and topsoil ready for planting.
31 March 2025 – Trial fit of the next two beds
Since the parking area had been installed the trees had taken full advantage of the opportunity and had extended their root systems right through the entire area. Clearing these roots out took longer than lifting the slabs! A few days work cleared out the significant root systems (that birch tree can certainly spread a wide root system!) and we started planning out the layout of the beds that we had.
27 > 28 March 2025 – Lifting the slabs
The project kicked off in Spring 2025 when a general post winter tidy-up morphed into a full blown project. We first lifted all 45 paving slabs over the course of 2 days and found that the gound underneath had been well levelled with sand and fortunately not cemented in place; we raked over the sand to clear out the ligher weeds and roots and then trial fitted the 1st bed. We had picked up 3 of these 2m x 1m beds from Gates Garden Centre the previous Christmas on a clearance sale and had been storing them ever since.
8 June 2024 – Irrigating the fields
Before we started anything we installed a series of water butts feeding off our garage to keep everything supplied with water without having to use tap water from the house. There was a bit of an issue with uneven filling, so we have since simplified the hose arrangement a bit 🙂
Previous images from before our purchase
By 2012 the previous allotment/raised beds area that had been in use by the 1990’s owners had been removed and turned in a parking area.
April 2023 for sale images (Hortons Estate Agent)
The previous car park has now been extended by 2 slabs in length.
November 2012 for sale images (Hartleys Estate Agent)
September 2004 images from “Owner#5“
