[Eibhlin ni Sheambrai]

After the building finished we were broke, exhausted and everywhere was just stones. I posted an ad for plants wanted.
We have been working hard and have completed two areas--a large triangular flowerbed and a wilder area near my birdfeeder. The flowerbed has a few large bushes moved from other places during the building, a silver birch in the centre that I got for €10 at the end of last summer, and all the rest are bits and pieces donated by others--mostly ground cover and thing that will spread and cover it all so I won't have to do weeding :). I put one of my re-cycled chair base/wigwams in and planted some sweetpea and so far so good, just coming up.
The rockery area was made last september--basically we had nowhere to put all the stones we were clearing off site so we piled them all down behind the wall and left them--a wonderful area for nettles and weeds. Anyway I attacked it last week and cleared the weeds, put in lots of soil and manure and popped a load of plants into all the holes between the rocks. Steptoes gave me a rambling rose which I put against the back wall so I am hoping it will take off and flourish there.
I also made a raised bed thingy out of three old bits of plank, joined together with old rusty hinges from the shed and put it around my goosberry and blackcurrant bushes to keep them weed free, so hoping for lots of fruit for homemade jam.Yum Yum!! Fruit bushes are now thriving(July)
Thanks to daz38, melissabell, sparkwell, earthprince, steptoes, angelfishingrods, pepperpixie, and others who donated but are not members of JTown (including the neighbouring farmer who gave us lots of horse manure !!) There is still a lot of work to do but the completed areas give my heart a lift when I go outside and I am minding them like babies:)

July update:We have continued working hard and bit by bit we are bringing order to the chaos. .we have now created another triangular bed with stones we dug up, more horse manure from our friendly farmer, wood chippings from our trees and cuttings from everything in the garden. Between the two flowerbeds is our Celtic cross made with concrete fencing posts and kerb stones (donated by my neighbour) and filled with different coloured stones to represent the four seasons and the four stages of growth-seed, greening,harvest and winter. We are delighted with how it turned out and with all the recycled materials we used--even the green coloured chippings are made from recycled glass. Our rockery is thriving and Steptoes daisies look a treat at the back of the border. The plant I got from JTowner in carlow--pepperpixie I think--is thriving although I still don't know what it is!!
We got steps built up to our wilderness area(had to pay carpenter for this) and I added pieces of expanded metal left over from dry-lining on the treads to make them safer in the wet and give grip. That will be our next project, clearing and planting this wilderness of nettles and bind weed.