Winter Projects

[doghouseriley]

This was one of mine.

As we had a koi pool for thirty years, after I built it, I wanted to include some Japanese features.

I'd looked at lanterns in garden centres, but back in the mid eighties they were really naff looking,  most just plastic and even the expensive ones looked as if they'd been made in a mold, as they were.

What I wanted was something about four feet high  and there were none.

I'd seen this illustration in a book on Japanese culture and decided that was what I wanted.

It's a lantern in the garden of the Imperial  Villa in Kyoto

The only way to get one was to make one myself.

I made it out of fine concrete mix with an outer skin of dyed mortar. The "kit," was just bits of wood and plastic tubs I had lying around in the garage. The windows were reinforced with bits of weldmesh.

I made the big base in a box made of scrap plywood, I rounded all the corners with a file before the mortar went completely off. If the mix is only "sandcastle damp" it's easy enough to shape. A steel rod connects the base of the underside of the lamp to the base.

It only cost a few pounds to make. The top has a recess to take a low voltage lamp

I got more adventurous after that one, after all it only took a few hours to make.

Then I made this in much the same way, but  it took a week or so, just a couple of hours a night.

it's six feet tall. It's sitting on a couple of corporation paving slabs.

These are recent photos, they've worn well and the moss ages them even more.

We've a lot of lights in our garden, mains coach lamps on the buildings, the rest are low voltage.

All controlled by four switches behind the lounge curtains.

But to tell the truth, they are rarely on. But I like to check now and again they are all working. I turn them on between Christmas and New Year and on the occasional warm summer evening.

Over thirty years ago I laid a four core plus earth armoured cable between the house and the garage before I built the patio, with no idea at the time what I'd use it for. Good job I did. I don't like exposed mains cables.

Everything is connected to "mission control" in the garage, there's also a good quality RCCB unit between this and the consumer unit in the house and I test it regularly.

This Massarelli fountain came from the USA, it's sitting over what was the koi filter pump sump, I was able to connect it to the cable that used to serve the pumps that runs under the path to the garage. The switch for it is one of those behind the lounge curtains.  It's low voltage adapter, is next to the consumer unit, so no mains supply near water.

[Rosefriend]

You may have already said doghouseriley, sorry if so, how large is your garden?

[maggy]

That’s really clever . Nice to see something unique .

[doghouseriley]

Thanks for the interest.

From the house it's nearly 90ft to the back fence.

Up to the end of the shed it's 18 ft wide, that's two thirds of the available space.

The rest is 30ft wide, but there's the tea-house in the corner, the roof of which is 12ft square.

I tried to give the impression of length, by not having straight lines where possible and have features to draw the eye.

The "bamboo forest" at the bottom of the garden helps, it's a foot deep and then there's the back fence.

I'm more a "garden manager," than a gardener. I move stuff about and if something gets too big for the size of the garden, it has to go.

For example, ten years ago three camellias we had in a centre bed had grown so tall and wide they  were obscuring the view of the bottom third of the garden.

So I binned two and cut the third down to a couple of feet and moved it to behind this lamp, it gets pruned every year, so it doesn't get many blooms, which doesn't bother me, but it has really nice glossy leaves.

For a while we had an almond tree but that died, so  now we have a big tub with a sambucus in it. The tub I'm trying to hide with three azaleas. This isn't a permanent feature, we may in the future move it to the patio and buy something else to put in a big tub there.

All the feature beds have concreted in  small block paver brick surrounds, as does the left hand border. This cuts down mowing time and elliminates,  "edging," as I can run my Flymo over the bricks.

The object of the exercise is to make a pleasant vista for my wife from her chair in the lounge, now that because of her MS she doesn't get out into the garden very often.

I'm not in to propogation. But I'm not bad at layering. These azaleas in our tiny front garden started life in a 4" pot thirty years ago, from a stall on Altrincham Market, it was in the reduced to clear box and priced at 99p.

I prune this with shears every year otherwise it would eventually block the pavement.

[Rosefriend]

I think you have done it very well, obviously you have the Japanese "touch" and it suits the garden well. Do you do everything yourself still or do you have help now and again??

I must admit that this year I happily got my girlfriend to help me put the garden to bed...

[Ladygardener]

doghouseriley, your garden is lovely and the stone lanterns / lights are smashing well done. The Japanese theme is working well and it all looks so peaceful. Your thinking ahead has paid off and I'm sure your OH enjoys looking out at such a lovely sight.

[doghouseriley]

Dec 9, 2020 9:32:28 GMT Ladygardener said:

doghouseriley , your garden is lovely and the stone lanterns / lights are smashing well done. The Japanese theme is working well and it all looks so peaceful. Your thinking ahead has paid off and I'm sure your OH enjoys looking out at such a lovely sight.

Thanks for the kind words.

I'm of an age where if you couldn't do it yourself it didn't get done, due to financial restraints when I was young. It's a case of teaching yourself. All my garden projects I did by myself.

My last major job was the new  kitchen, over ten years ago. My wife wanted spotlights in the ceiling, so I fitted a false ceiling and put in eight spotlights. I did get a plasterer in to skim the ceiling and a company fitted new units, (they still look like new), but I fitted new sockets, did the tiling, laid the laminate floor  and the decorations.

A minor job was when we had a new combi boiler three years ago.

We went from this.

To this

"Oo! I get a new kitchen!" said my wife.

"No chance!" said I and with a bit of fettling, we've now got this.

Even a couple of shelves for instruction books etc.,

Theree's an "L shaped" tiled fillet under the boiler hiding all the pipework  that slides out, if necessary. The piece of pelmet under the new door is removable as the front of the boiler folds down for servicing.

Since retiring early in 1998,  I've been able to afford, as my wife says, "to get a man in." So for when major redecorations  are necessary, we go round the corner and stay at the Premier Inn and come back when it's finished, we've done that twice.

With one exception. The kitchen needed redecoration, paper and ceiling and we were hoping to get someone in, but Covid put a stop to that. So I said I'd do it.

My wife wasn't too keen as I'm now eighty, (what difference she thought that would make, I don't know). "Well you could do a couple of hours a day and spread it over a week or so."  She said. I said nothing, but I wasn't going to be dancin' around a paste table in a tiny kitchen for a week. So a month ago I started on the Friday, washed down the ceiling, gave it two coats and stripped the wallpaper. On Saturday I gave the ceiling another coat and hung the wallpaper. Job done!

We bought a darker red paper a year ago for it. It now looks a bit like a 1950s American diner.

While we were having the boiler replaced three years ago, (a golfing pal who is a gas boiler engineer fitted it) the Bosh fridge/freezer packed up and we couldn't get another one the same size, they were all a centimetre too tall!

So I took out the cupboard over it and we had a much taller Meile instead. I used the cupboard door to make a fillet above it and used the handle for the new door I had made in front of the boiler.

When I'd finished the kitchen, my wife said "The back bedroom could do with re-decorating."

I said. "Forget it!"

[Ladygardener]

Ha ha, good for you doghouseriley, you're handy in the home as well as in the garden.

[maggy]

A very handy man indeed

Love that azalea in the front garden I have never seen such a show stopper.

[doghouseriley]

Thanks for that.
We've never been able to identify that azalea. The stall on the market from which my wife bought it belonged to a family who owned a nursery we often visited. I took a bloom down to them and even the owner could not identify it.
The nursery is now a housing estate, it's happened to many in the past decade or so.

It's so prolific, I was able to take two layered pieces and plant them in the back garden, where they do very well.

This is one.

[Ladygardener]

They're both really striking doghouseriley,.

[Tig]

The azaleas have performed beautifully for you. One is very similar to azalea japonica blue danube.