On my return to Bryan's Ground following a HORTUS garden tour in mid June I was momentarily disorientated, finding our 120-foot arrow-straight front drive dug to a depth of about two feet. Simon had been threatening to replace it with a canal for years and the mood took him as I and twenty-seven Oldie readers trundled around Wessex. It is an epic undertaking, although the initial digging-out (above) was a mere day's work for two men with bulldozer and dumper truck. A row of five apple trees ?now safely re-established in the arboretum ?was first removed from the orchard to one side of the drive, and the hard surface of the old drive trucked to the new site and tamped down by the bulldozer's heavy to-ings and fro-ings. The sub-soil was then dug to a depth of about twelve inches and is preserved in a giant mound for future use elsewhere. So far, so good. It just remains now (ha!) for the canal's serpentine design to be fashioned in concrete blocks and rendered with waterproofing mortar ?no more than six months' hard labour, I'd say.
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