Non-Gardener builds an Observatory, Garden Railway and even Dabbles with Plants!

13th July 2025

Sunday's garden centre trip was a hot one. We didn't find any plastic pots that would work as a pond, but did come back with some verbena. Most of these were plated in the top of the kitchen border. Three others were planted a little further down by the stepping stones.

I hadn't been around the back of the garage for a while, but something urged me to go. When I got there, I found that the Creeping jenny was flowering for the first time.



Having not found a pot, I sealed the holes in the terracotta pot with some Gorilla glue. This would take 24 hours to fully cure, so in the mean time, the plants were moved to another container. I was still hopeful that I'd find a larger plastic pot, but the repair would do for now.

 

Late in the day, we went out to another local garden centre and found a plastic pot of around 18 inches diameter. It wasn't too expensive and potentially could be used in the future and a bog filter and feature to start the steam.

I did a test fill with the hose pipe, after measuring how long the hose took to fill a litre jug with water. That gave a flow rate of just 360ltr/hr from the hose. It wasn't a bad effect, from a fairly low flow rate and with a little help with angle adjustment and perhaps some slight modification of the rim, I should get a good pour.

For the projected stream width that I'm thinking of, a flow rate of 1600ltr/hr would be ideal, so this would help the flow from the pot, pouring into the first pond. With that test done, I put the plants into the new pot. During the earlier garden centre visits, I'd spotted some other pond plants and oak half barrels, but didn't want to commit to any plants until I had the pot sorted.



14th July 2025

Since the plastic pot was working for me, Lynne and I had a lunchtime garden centre trip today, to get two barrels, a couple of pond plants and some compost to use when replanting the barrels.

The two pond plants I went for was a Houttuynia cordata, which has white flowers and a Pontederia cordata which will flower purple in late Summer into Autumn.

 

The old barrels really had seen better days. Earlier this year, we'd contemplated changing them next year, but having had a closer look over the last couple of days, I wasn't sure they were going to make it through the Winter. The wood was rotten and the metal hoops rusted and falling off.



As I started digging out the plants, it rapidly got worse; much worse! The rings fell off completely and the wooden stays either fell out or snapped. I found some of the estate agents pictures of the house from when it was up for sale to the previous owners eight years ago and they looked rotten around the top back then, so they were already in a poor state when we moved in four years ago.

I got the first one filled and replanted and then quickly decided that being indoors rapidly was a good idea.

 

Over to the West, the sky turned very black. I had just enough time to get the tools and compost into the workshop, when the lightning, thunder and Pacific ocean arrived. Instantly, I had the stream water feature I wanted, running off the patio, down the sloped paving, across the second patio, down the second ramp and onto the lawn!



Twenty to thirty minutes later, it stopped as fast as it started and the sun was almost out. The second palm put up a fight to get it out of the old pot, as its roots had grown into the rotten timber, anchoring it in. Eventually it came out and the plants moved to the new pot.

It was only after both were done, that I started to have second thoughts about the palms. I began to wonder whether the roots had contributed to the decay of the wood, speeding up the destruction of the pots. We planted them four years ago.

After a chat with Lynne, who didn't like the really tall one anyway, we've decided to dump the really tall one and move the shorter one to a large clay pot on the front drive. We'll put some taller flowers in the centre to replace them. Bedding plants and the like, don't have such an extensive root system as the palms.



You may recall that the Hebe at the bottom of the garden, didn't survive the Winter, loosing the will to live in February. While at the garden centre, we bought a Viburnum davidii to fill the tree ring instead of the Hebe. We have a Viburnum tinus in the woodland not far away and that seems to be doing okay. So there's another job on the list after shifting the palms again!

 

15th July 2025

This morning, I got both the palm trees removed from the planters and the flowers replanted. We're now looking for something slightly larger to go in the middle.



The large palm was cut up and binned, as it's garden bin week, while the small palm was moved to the front garden, in a pot that formerly had Canterbury bells. During that replanting, I emptied all the soil from the third barrel at the side of the house, which was also rotten.

While digging this third pot out yesterday and today, I uncovered a couple of dozen Tulip bulbs. After planting the palm, I went around to the lounge border and weeded the whole thing, followed by planting all the Tulip bulbs at various places along the border.

Rain stopped play around noon, so I stopped for lunch, getting back out about 45 minutes later. This time I was at the bottom of the garden, to lift out all the slates from the tree ring and dig a larger hole for the Viburnum davidii. Despite some heavy rain yesterday and today, the earth at the bottom of the hole was bone dry.

Before planting, the Viburnum had soaked overnight in a pot with some water and I also poured some water into the bottom of the hole to wet out the dry earth. The Viburnum was planted followed by a light top watering, then the weed membrane placed around it, inside the tree ring and the slates re-filled. Another job done!

Just as I got that finished, it began raining heavily again, so that was it for the day.

 

16th July 2025

The postman brought the solar powered pond pump today. It was a £10 Ebay find with a 1.5watt solar panel and 200 litres per hour flow.



When I first set it up, it was overcast and the pump gave a brief spurt and stopped, then a spurt and stopped. When the sun came out, it gave a reasonable flow. It was slightly disappointing, but then a thought struck me.....

.....It was a glancing blow and I quickly recovered! A few months back, I bought a small 10watt solar panel to run one of the action cams in the wood. It didn't work for the camera and it turned out to be a dodgy USB plug. I cut the plug off several days ago and with a multi-meter, found the panel worked fine. It happened to be the same voltage as the pond pump!

The pond pump solar panel had wires soldered to the back of the panel, hidden under black tape. Pulling the tape away revealed the solar connections. After a quick polarity check, the 10w panel was soldered on, wired in parallel. The extra kick from the 10w panel allowed the pump to work while it was overcast and bright sun. Now I was happy and the small pump was the perfect size for the mini pond.

Here's a couple of pictures of the pump in action under a bright sun, but I've also added a video showing the pump as it was initially under the overcast sky, then with the additional solar panel connected.

 

I've also mentioned that I hope to make a stream next year. This is the approximate plan, starting beside the sun room patio and twisting down the slate border to near the lawn.



With all the rain yesterday, the lawn was too wet to work on the lawn edging, so I did some stream experiments. I set up a sheet of chipboard, sloping down some of the patio steps. I added some strip timber along each side, around 9 inches apart, all covered with some plastic. The angle of the board varied from 2 to 8 degrees. I also varied the waterfall outlet from 9 inches wide to 6 inches.

I had an empty 4 litre filler tub which I filled with water for a pour test. A flow rate calculator said that a 2,000 litres per hour flow rate would be half a litre per second. So if I poured the filler tub out over 8 seconds, it should give the impression of a 2,000LPH flow rate. Slowing or speeding up the pour rate, gave an idea of different flow rates in litres per hour, which could then show what pumps would be suitable.

I'm thinking of going solar so I don't have any electricity costs. While this means the water won't flow 24 hours a day, I can design the stream with holding pools along its length, to keep water in most of the stream, even when there's no flow. Something to ponder while I'm still slogging away at the lawn edging.

 

Your mini pond with the solar pump is lovely. Just make sure that on a really sunny day the spray is not going outside the edge and emptying the pot.

 

The spray doesn't go too high, but if the wind gets up, I can always turn one panel over to reduce the flow. The pump isn't far below the surface, so it could only drain it about two inches if left pumping water out.

 

17th/18th July 2025

On the 17th, I spent around six hours, continuing the foundation for the edging. So many slates were buried in the grass, that the woodland must have been six to ten inches wider in the past! I got to within about a four feet of the end stake, marking the end of the straight stretch and where the edging would begin to turn around the wood. By that point, my bones were telling me I could neither kneel or sit to work.

The following day, I dug out the last four feet, up to the stake, which is close to the top path into the wood. After that, I got my long handled loppers and my power drill out, to remove a number of roots along the trench. For the larger ones, I used a three quarter inch wood bit in the drill and drilled multiple holes to allow me to break out the root.



While I had the drill and wood bits at the bottom of the garden, after two years, I finally got around to finishing the railway. There was no hole under the chair for the screw, so I had to drill a new one. Once everyone was home at the end of the day, we had the "Golden Spike" ceremony, jointly screwing in the last chair screw to complete the line.



I should have got the village brass band to come along and play something appropriate! Building this project certainly gave me an appreciation of the original navvies who began the railway era in this region, 300 years ago - 100 years before the modern railways were considered to have begun. The Sun gave us a nice sun set to mark the occasion.

Nothing happened on the 19th, due to heavy rain all day. Various trays under plant pots, filled with around 2 inches of water across the next 24 hours.

 

19th July 2025

Re-seeding the top of the lawn, around the area of the sloped paving, has been a real challenge in the long hot dry Spring and early Summer. I originally spread the grass seed and covered it with a thin layer of soil to try and keep the moisture in.

That failed to grow, despite frequent watering. The more it was watered, misting the water on and letting it soak in before re-watering, the more the soil covering it was washed into the ground, leaving the seed exposed. In the heat, it was hard to keep the ground and seed damp, so I tried method two.

That was pre-germinating the seed. Having watched a Youtube video, I filled the foot of an old pair of tights with grass seed and soaked it in water for 24 hours. Then every twelve hours after that, the seed was dunked in water to wet it out again. Once I saw roots and some shoots growing, the seed was tipped out, mixed with a little sand and soil to help dry it a little, so it would spread.

That seemed to have worked. The pre-germinated seed had done all the hard work in my workshop and with some slightly more mixed weather, was growing in the bald areas of the lawn. I'm onto my third batch of pre-germinated seed, gradually going around, covering the bald spots. It's slowly filling out now, but has been much harder than the railway lawn.

20th July 2025

There was lots of heavy rain on the 20th, but during the gaps in the rain, I managed to dig out a load of Brambles infesting the wood and spreading everywhere. I got a lot of it several days ago, but some new shoots had appeared, so I tried to chase back the roots. Some of theme had gone under the Dryopteris, which I think I'm mentioned needing to move. So while digging out the Brambles, I also dug out the Dryopteris and moved it to the back entrance to the wood. It should get more daylight generally here and will also get direct late afternoon and evening sun.

 

21st July 2025

With rain forecast mid to late morning, I wanted to try and get something useful done. So around 10am, I went out with the wheelbarrow and started trundling the concrete edging stones down to the wood, two at a time. It took a while!

I laid them out along the woodland and curving around the top of the wood. We didn't want two straight lines of edging, so from around the top entrance to the wood, the stones began to swing around.



I knew it was going to be very difficult to get a consistent curve, so thought about groups of three stones in a straight line, then a slight turn with another three stones, then another turn and three stones. This would then leave one at an angle and two straight around the tree at the top.

I didn't want the stones spreading too far out into the lawn, so opted for a slight change to this plan. There will be one low set stone in front of the top entrance. There will be a slight turn, then three straight stones. In the middle will be two straight stones, then another slight turn and three more straight stones.

Where the two stones are in the middle, there will be quite a large open area behind them. The area marked with the yellow line is around six feet long and about three feet deep. We're thinking of creating an edge with some chunky slates and filling it with earth for some bedding plants. This area can be seen from the patio, sun room and kitchen window, so it would be nice to have some Summer colour here.

 

The rain was holding off, so I began excavating the final height of the lower entrance edging stone. This has been lowered to reduce the tripping hazard when entering the wood. Next to it is a short off-cut from the top of the garden. Putting this short section in here, at the bottom of the garden where it's not obvious, moves all the three feet edging stones up the garden a bit.

Shifting them up the wood brings a full stone in line with the middle entrance. The second picture shows a stone on the left, which is where they originally would have finished, if I'd use all full length stones. That would have offset the low entrance stone to be in line with the tree. Adding the short stone at the bottom, puts the low level stone in a much better place. I'm just going to move the stepping stone to the left a little, to bring it in line with the centre of the edging stone. The rain ended up staying away all day, so I got both of these stones concreted into the ground. That will give me a firm footing to clamp the next stones to as I work up the wood.



Adding the short stone at the bottom of the wood, moves everything up by around twelve or so inches, which also helps with the positioning of the low entrance stone at the top of the wood. After curving around the proposed flower bed, there's just three stones left to finish up to the tree; giving me one spare stone. This may end up being cut to provide some weeding stepping stones in the railway embankment at the back left behind the Hebe.

 

22nd July 2025

On the 22nd, I got the next four edging stones clamped, laid and concreted in place. I covered over the concrete with soil to trap the moisture in as it was a hot day and I didn't want it drying out too fast.

23rd July 2025

It chucked it down almost all day, so I did very little outside. During the gaps in the rain, I pulled a few weeds, took a few cuttings to try and grow and moved my Geranium from its pot to one of the barrel planters.

 

24th July 2025

The 24th was a hard day on my back and knees. Lots of digging to level the foundations for the edging stones, but by late afternoon, I'd got another seven stones concreted in. This took me up to the middle entrance to the wood.

I decided not to lower the entrance stone, as it was going to make the next stone look overly high and spoil the even stepping. I'll back fill the slates quite high on the inside so that it's more of a step up into the wood, rather than stepping over. This should reduce the likelihood of tripping.

The stones were cast with the moulds not 100% level. As a result, the thickness varies from one end to the other and the front wood grain pattern also affects the thickness. This has made laying them straight quite a challenge, not having a consistent straight edge to line up. Despite this, the line isn't looking too bad.