Friday, October 03, 2014

Back to Eden Garden...Part 2...Heavy machinery involved in tree andgarden removal.

The best decision I've ever made was to bring in Mark Benson and his heavy machinery to clear out the gardens, trees and lawn. Normally to build a BTE garden you just put down newspapers rather than remove the lawn. In our area there is really no lawn. Just lots of weeds and buttercups. In solid, rock hard clay. In addition, the yard was full of large dips and bumps, so this will get rid of most of the weeds and level everything out. So let's proceed!!



Horse manure being dumped in the driveway. 


Isn't that Bobcat the coolest thing you've ever seen! It is keeping the manure tidy.


Removal of the front garden. This will just be edged and replanted. Something a bit simpler and easier to keep up. 


Removal of the cedars at the side we will use to get in and out of the back for this project. I think it will visibly brighten up the front of the house. And the neighbours house. 


Greenery going into the huge trailer with hydraulics. It is also an unbelievable piece of machinery. I am completely envious. 


The big surprise of the day was the removal of the willow root. I believe this tree only went in about three years ago? There were no horizontal roots. All straight down. Mark had to dig down about five feet to get the root ball out. You can see in the next photo our 36 year old willow tree. You can only imagine how much I am dreading that tree dying some day and what it will be like to remove.


The beginning of lawn removal. We start again tomorrow morning. I'm pretty exhausted. 

If you would like to contact the man behind the machinery to help you with your gardens and you live on the Saanich Peninsula, his name is Mark Benson. If you leave me a comment, I can put you in touch. 

3 comments:

Gardeningbren said...

Did you save the rhodo? Roots very shallow and can be easily moved..well, with help ))))
Am so glad to watch this. Keep the photos coming.

Erin said...

I will keep the photos coming I promise. I am going to blog every step. And yes I did save the rhododendron. Mark was very careful around it. I may be tidying up that garden tomorrow. There may be pictures.

Erin said...

You can find Mark Benson here as well!!

http://members.shaw.ca/mpbenson/