Rain Rain Go Away

There is one subject that’s been on everyone’s lips this year. The weather, and in particular, the rain. The relentless rain.

It makes my blood boil when trawling the various ‘Red Tops’ and social media sites and I see people attacking this beautiful country of ours just because it’s raining.

Yes its summer, yes we’ve had record breaking rainfall and flooding and all the things associated, but who really suffers?

Are you suffering just because you haven’t got your usual tan?

Are you suffering because you can’t have a bbq every evening?

Are you suffering because your camping trip might be slightly damp?

My answer to all these questions is a big, fat NO!

Do you want to know who does suffer? I’ll tell you, Gardeners.

My brother and I run our own Landscaping and Gardening business. We both have a mortgage, we both have bills to pay and we both have families to support.

You see the reason why gardeners, in particular sole trading gardeners suffer most is because quite simply if it rains we cant work and if we cant work we don’t get paid and if we don’t get paid then neither does the mortgage and if the mortgage doesn’t get paid……I don’t even want to think about that!

We’re not exactly well paid to start with as we can’t command the same rates as most other trades due to being undervalued as Alan Titchmarsh quite rightly stated, so having rain stop play so often can be a worry.

Not only that, we are in a seasonal business. We work long hours in summer to make up for the shorter hours in winter. Summer rain has a massive effect on this.

The one positive I can say for this year is that we had a relatively decent winter unlike a few years ago when the ice forced us to down tools for well over a month.

There will be gardeners out there who say just get a raincoat and plod on through and I’ve even had clients who come out with comments like “don’t be soft and get your raincoat on.” (Easy to say from your plush, dry living room I might add!), but we are purists and like to do things properly.

If it’s tipping it down with rain we can’t mow the lawn. Some will say you can, but if it’s sodden and your mower is heavy it will inevitably turn into a mud bath and create lovely areas for weeds to grow. Wet grass takes at least double the time to cut and heavy rain doesn’t do your mower any good.

We can’t dig or tread on the borders for obvious reasons so that rules out pruning and weeding. We can’t use any sort of weed killers, lawn feeds, fungicides etc

Personally our main work consists of landscaping. The list of things we can’t do in the rain is longer than gardening tasks!!

No laying patios, definitely no pointing, no walling, no laying turf.

The only thing we could possibly do is erect fencing, but you try and fill every day of every week with fencing jobs!!

I’ve missed out one important factor and that is simply ITS NOT VERY NICE AT ALL WORKING IN HEAVY RAIN!

So next time your moaning because your weekend bbq plans have been ruined, spare a thought for my brother and I sitting in our van, looking glum and soaked to the bone because all we want to do is work.

Out With the Old

This is a job we undertook for the father of a friend. The property was a sizeable new build with a reasonable large garden on the outskirts of York.

After several meetings and discussions and designs and re-designs the client decided on a fairly simple layout of two large curved patios connected with paths.

The old patios were square and finished in a concrete paver. For added interest and a contrast to the square edges of the house we decided to curve the new patio and use real stone.

With large jobs like this there can be an awful lot of barrowing of materials!! Especially if there has been a new driveway installed, which the delivery trucks are not allowed on!!

Drains sometimes need to be modified for ease of laying the new pavers. In this case the rodding point needed to be raised and we decided to change circular drain tops to square tops.

More materials being delivered!!!

Its always wise to start laying pavers with the right angle of a building if you can. This eliminates the need for a builders triangle as you can set your string line off the lie of the house wall.

When laying curves we always lay over and then cut the final curve at the very end. This gives a smoother, straighter cut than trying to cut each individually and match to the next.

Curved steps keep the theme consistant and look lovely.

Cutting the curve.

We always edge our patios with brick. The contrast of materials looks fantastic and they give the eye a finishing boundry.

The planting areas will bush out in no time. We used flowering shrubs as the clients brief for planting was low maintenence. These will need trimming once or twice a year and not much else.

The finished job