Our garden blog has just taken a very unexpected twist....
Last Friday at around 2pm I received a phone call saying that the fire brigade are in our garden putting out a fire that started in one of our neighbours garden. Rushing back home, what I found, of what were once very lush and leafy parts of our garden, with a well built outbuilding and a jungle veranda, were these....
The fire started from one of the neighbours, quickly spreading to adjacent properties including ours
Eriobotrya japonica, left Fatsia polycarpa, middle and Trochodendron aralioides, right
The garden outbuilding, it was well built and insulated and despite the outside being severely burnt...
the inside was not spared from water damage, soot, and burnt smell
All our trusty electrical tools, water damaged
What was once a tall and proud Liriodendron tulipfera
and a beautiful Magnolia delavayi to the right
The Jungle Verandah, soot, ash, and water everywhere
A jungle no more...
Of what were a Dicksonia antarctica to the left and a Trachycarpus wagnerianus to the right
Ground ferns burnt
Of what's left of our signature blue bench and the ruins of a vase
After the initial shock, and a weekend of cleaning out the mess, debris, ashes that fell on the rest of our garden that were unaffected, our emotions turned from disbelief to irritation as we now go through the process of making claims for the damages. Plenty of phone calls were made (and still plenty more to do), lots of listing were done, researching and requesting for quotations here and there, salvaging what can be salvaged, and planning ahead; the situation has now settled into the annoyance of needing to squeeze in more work into what is already an exceptionally busy year for us.Something we haven't mentioned before (and will mention now as to imply a clearer picture of our current, overall situation) is that our house is currently undergoing major renovation. I mentioned on a couple of blog posts before about the work that is happening on our top patio this summer but it is actually much more than that, rather the entire ground floor of the house is undergoing a major facelift. This detail we haven't mentioned before but I thought it's best to mention now as this is the main factor affecting how we are handling what is a very unexpected turn of events in the garden.
So our house is getting a makeover, what we didn't anticipate is that nearly the entire old garden will be needing a makeover too. The garden is supposed to be mostly 'finished' already, and now it needs work doing on it again....
To avoid undue stress we decided to continue concentrating on the house and the restoration of the garden will have to take second fiddle. As soon as necessary arrangements have been sorted then the burnt areas will be cleared, planting beds will be bark mulched and left blank until replacement plants have arrived.
Before
After
Before
After
Before
After
Before
After
One of the signature traits of our garden and gardening blog is that we do nearly all of the work ourselves, planting and structural. This time however we are handing over the clearing and rebuilding of the burnt structures to the professionals. And the rebuilding won't be done until the work on our house has finished, as there are only so many builders and materials our garden can accommodate at any one point.So there you go, a very unexpected and now interesting twist to our gardening adventures. We are fascinated ourselves as to how things will unfold in the coming months, and what changes will happen. Stay with us as we continue to update our blog on how we deal with the damages, the process of clearing out, rebuilding, replanting, and the changes that will happen as a result of this event. And one other aspect we will definitely feature is the response and behavior of the plants that were affected by the fire. Some are well and truly demised but which ones will resprout and which ones will recover after going through inferno? Plants are amazing things and we're hoping to be surprised.
Knickers inspecting the unexpected changes (yes, both cats are fine, and so does all the fish)
Out of the ashes a phoenix will rise.... (metaphorical bird I mean, and not Phoenix canariensis!)Mark :-)
