Another 1/3

We made some significant progress this week.

Hillside is set in 1/3 of an acre - not a vast garden but large enough to allow space for the extension works plus various trees (including the coppiced hazels and the huge 100 yearold chestnut) and still leave space for other plants once we get around to developing a plan.

So you might wonder why we'd want more space...! After several months of negotiation, and 'processing' by our solicitor's, as of Tuesday we are now the proud owners of another 1/3 of an acre now that we have bought the piece of land next-door.

Covered in a mixture of long grass, brambles, nettles and assorted saplings it'll take a bit of clearing to make it usable. But for what? Well, it'd be great to grow some of our own veg, fruit trees and extend the area of hazel etc to coppice for fuel. It's technically agricultural land and not garden (unless we can get the planners to agree to change of use) so it'll probably end up as the 'working' part of the garden, with the original 1/3 being the more 'ornamental' bit.

As for clearing it, I think we've a bit of work to do. We now own a petrol strimmer which will help but there'll still be a lot of back-breaking work involved. I've read up on the best ways to clear ground of nettles and brambles and it seems that goats and pigs are the best option - unless you want to apply a weedkiller such as Roundup, which goes against our organic principles. With no plans currently to introduce livestock I think we'll have to clear it by hand...once it stops raining.

Here's to a winter of looking through seed catalogues choosing interesting veg to grow, I think it'd make Dad proud!