Charlie's Gardening Neighbours - (4)

To see enlarged pictures click on any the "picture strips" below

Programme 4 There are just two weeks left to complete the gardens prior to the village Open Day. With the main structures almost complete the gardeners concentrate on the water features. Alistair's Scandinavian water feature (pictured below) simulates a Finnish dried river bed as his mum lives in Finland. Charlie prepares the corrugated roof of Alistair's scooter porch using capillary matting and soil before covering it with a mat of sedums. Picture 4 below shows Charlie in Finland. She talks to Alistair's mum about what features you can expect in her Finnish garden and finds that campanulas, phlox, sedums, hostas and geraniums grow as well in Finland as they do in Crick.

The corrugated roof will be covered with a carpet of sedum plants

The hard landscaping in Alistair's garden is almost complete

Charlie motors along the Finnish lake to visit Alistair's mum

Allan is not impressed with his millstone water feature, considering it too nondescript and flat. "It's just like two bits of bricks stuck on top of each other" but Deborah and the children like the child friendly feature, so it stays! Work on Cynthia and John's Japanese Tea House continues and Dave's fish pond is filled by fire officers from the Northamptonshire fire brigade using water from the nearby Grand Union Canal. His large, deep pond has a capacity of 9000 litres and will house river fish such as golden tench, golden rud and golden orf. Charlie convinces Dave that dark green will be a better colour for his pond than Dave's preferred blue, as green will give good reflections and make the pond look bigger and deeper. Of course the inevitable happens and Dave is given an unofficial dunking.

Unlike Allan, Allan's children love the new water feature.

John and Cynthia's Tea House nears completion

Dave's garden will have a large fish pond, a bar, and a barbecue

Dave takes to his new pond like a duck takes to water

Programme 5 sees the planting scheme. Although all is calm this week, next week Allan loses his cool with the landscapers, again! They take out their vengeance on his garden posts in a most dramatic way!

Charlie's Gardening Neighbours - programmes[ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 5 ]

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