Shreddies

I have a new toy. Behold mygarden shredder. The rain stayed away enough for me to play with it yesterday and I adore it and I still have all my fingers intact to-boot.

I have an 8 cubic yard skip to fill and the contents will be the vast majority of my front garden.

When we first arrived 10 years ago I took up the lawn and made a very fashionable scree garden which looked wonderful for the first few years but now the plants have become too large and it just looks a mess.

I blame, I'm sorry to to say, Mr Titchmarsh. Following his lead I used a lot of grasses back then. Yes they looked great to start with but they easily overgrow and take over everything like Posh Spice in a celebrity magazine.

So my front garden lays foul of two gardening fashion statements which are showing their age - the conifers of the 1980s and the grasses of the 1990s. It's the gardening equivalent of a puffball skirt suit with a pashmina.

Gardening was rained off today but hopefully tomorrow I can get back to it. The fight tomorrow will be me versus conifer roots - one of us will end up in that skip but I wouldn't lay any bets if I was you.

Once cleared my plan is to ignore whatever is considered fashionable in garden design today, have no regard for what is considered to go together and plant what the bloody hell I want. I will mix wood and gravel, slate and box, black and blue - stuff that in your compost bin and rot it Chelsea Garden designers!