It seemed like a brilliant idea.
“Let’s make a flower bed in the middle of the lawn. More colour, less mowing. There will be plenty left if you ever fancy a game of crochet.” A perfect plan, not just perfect, inspired.
“We’ll pile the sods in corner a few meters away and when it has rotted down in 18 months time it will have transformed into a lovely loamy top soil that we can use around the garden where necessary. Sorry? What did you say? A change of plan? You want the turf transported up the steep and slippery gravel path, past two encroaching and especially prickly holly bushes, across more gravel at the front of The Hall, through the gate and beyond to reclothe the tatty lawn by the herb beds? ” Admittedly this would involve more work, but still it was a great idea, two jobs completed in one foul swoop, can’t argue with that. Let’s get going.
“The wheel barrow has a flat tyre?” Fine, we’ll fill the trug, attach it to the sack truck and pull it up the slope.
“The sack truck has two flat tyres”. Silence.
“But we have another sack truck”. Result!
Fast forward through 7 hours of turf removal, turf transporting, turf laying, carrying bags of compost and sand down the slippery slope, digging, ball throwing, extraction of two full barrows of buried broken bricks and concrete that had to be pushed on the flat tyred barrow to their resting place, edge laying and, phew, the job was complete. We were broken. But we did it. We created an elliptical bed, much larger than it appears in the photo below but I didn’t have the energy to walk the 10m required for a better view-point. They said it couldn’t be done. We showed them.
Now for the planting. The good bit.
Off The Edge Gardening 
Ah, good. Someone with experience. You know I have a bad back and two dicky shoulders? Need to shift about 10 cubic metres of topsoil mix. Simply shovel it from bulk bags into a barrow (mixing stuff together as you go), cart to an edifice, shovel it out of barrow. And repeat (repeatedly). If you prefer I can make a ramp at the edifice end of the trips. Barrow doesn’t have a flat tyre. No steep slopes. Interested? I’ll supply tea and cake once the job’s done. 😉
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I’m on my way ………
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I had a similar thought to John…
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OK, I’ll pop down after John’s.
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😀
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My goodness you must be fit. Exercise and a new border to contemplate. Two good things in one day.
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Not fit enough, exhausted me!
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Ah yes, I remember the New Planting Bed projects in my last garden; pretty sure that’s how I first messed up my lower back, LOL. Next week I will begin an edging project for 7 existing (thankfully already dug out by prior owners) empty planting beds here. The prospect of wheelbarrowing 575 cement edgers from the driveway they’ll be dumped into, to multiple parts of the backyard, is going to be Not Fun. At least once they are sorted at their respective bed locations I can take my time installing them. But the moving process is going to be a Major Ouch.
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Oh, my muscles are tensing just thinking about it!
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Just as my lawn got laid you toiled to get your new flower bed. It looks brilliant!
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I would have called for the dozer first and returned after it left.
That is an impressively neat ellipse thought! I mean, that is like perfect, without any damage to the remaining lawn turf!
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