Pacific Northwest Gardening: Gravel Path, 0 by Laurie1

Laurie1 wrote:
This is picture 2.

Well I almost got it right - I posted the pictures without the barn showing - so you will just have to imagine it backing on to this room. But I am sure that you get the idea.

The area to the left of the big willow is now a damp bed. We collect the water into two large rainbarrels, and the overflow is then channeled through a drainage pipe under the path, and into the bed. We didn't have to line the bed (thank goodness!) because we are on heavy clay with a limestone base less than 50cm below. However, when we dug the beds last winter, we did double dig all of it, incorporating two spit deep trenches of barnyard manure. I think the effort of double digging, along with the geologic structure worked. This summer we had drought conditions, and although the level of the pond dropped to it lowest level ever (it pre-exists the new bed), the bed never dried out or needed topping up.

Interestingly, having just had the wettest october on record (and this is England so the records do go back a fair bit) the bed has not turned into slushy mud. That I can't figure out at all.

This message was edited Nov 21, 2006 3:24 AM

This message was edited Nov 21, 2006 3:35 AM