The Garden Wall

The Garden Wall - The Largest project of all

The most important project to us here at the Stables was to have an enclosed garden for our vegetables and flowers, even more so when we spotted a rabbit or two on odd occasions as having these ravenous veggie munchers in your vegetable plot is not a thing you would want to see, especially if there are a lot of them. The only thing left to do was to figure out how to lay the wall out to suit our purposes. As we share a stone-built wall with the cemetery next door, it seemed appropriate to utilize those walls as part of the garden wall to save on building and materials.

Map 1: The build is under way with the south and west walls up. Just the North and the bottom wall to go.

Photo:1 above was taken from Google Earth showing the main field and the walled garden part built.  Photo:2 is the same photo with labels to show how we intend to section off the walled garden from the rest of the field. The yellow line running along the 'new road' has already been built and the only piece left to do is the small yellow line that runs down to the cemetery wall at the bottom of photo:2. The longer two yellow lines on the east and south are the cemetery boundary walls which were already there. We have highlighted where the other points of interest are in the main field so you can orientate easier when we mention something.

Start of the walled garden area being built by Paul. 
 
This corner is the highest part of the wall.

We started the wall build on the southwest corner as this was the highest point of the wall at 7 blocks high, this is due to the fall of the field as it has a slight slope to the south which is perfect for growing, but is a little demanding when building walls as you have to step-up the wall as you go up the slope. 
In later photos you will see strange marks on the block walls and this is due to the high concentration of minerals in the silver sand that is used in this part of the UK. As the weight was large for the first corner, Paul built a concrete raft to take the weight of so many blocks to make sure that the wall would not move or drop in any kind of weather.
The blocks used are high density concrete and are both heavy and strong, but they do take longer to lay and you have to be more careful how you lay them as their weight can easily distort a wall, especially if you try to build too high, too quick. On the above maps you can see two white lines, these show the two parts of the wall that were completed when the photo was taken by the satellite. The lower white wall is the South wall which was built first and the white wall above the South wall is the West wall running up to the Hut. The hut is also built on two layers of blocks to keep it off the ground to deter rodents from invading the hut.

The temporary fence comes down as the wall build progressed.
 
West wall going up along the vegetable garden. 

As the West wall was built we took down the original fence with the builders netting on, this was to take away hiding places for slugs and snails which invade every garden and can cause havoc. We had to move every single block from the front drive up to the building area as the width restriction on the drive would not allow heavier trucks further on the property so that was quite a job in itself. Our 4x4 was invaluable for this job as we could get 26 of these heavy blocks in at a time and the field was often wet and slippery.
By the time we built up to the Hut area, Paul then had to get the corner posts for the hut in situ so the lower wall could be built all around as the foundations for the hut. These were set in concrete and would be inside the finished construction so would not be exposed to the elements.

The corner posts for the hut build are in.

When the posts were set the wall build could be continued.

The hut is 22 feet x 18 feet so is quite a size and once the footings were in and the posts set, the hut foundation walls could be run in all around the base of the hut. This was quite easy to do as the foundation of the hut was only 2 blocks high so it went up fast. At this point, it was decided to halt the continuation of the wall along the North side so Paul could start on the hut as once built, would provide us with shelter, storage, water, internet, etc, which would be excellent. The Hut build is on its own page where you can see how it was built on the foundations and the stages it was done in, there are plenty of photos to show the build in detail. There were quite a few months before the wall build was started again, but this time it was on the North wall of the vegetable gardens running down to the Composting area.

The finished hut and the blocks lined up for the North wall.

Showing the run down to the composting area on the North wall.

When the hut was finished we started getting the blocks up to the field, stacked, and ready for laying. As the start of the wall had been started either end of the North side, it was a case of digging out the trench, getting the footings in, and then running in the middle sections. You can see from the photo below that Paul built returns on the block wall which are about 3 feet deep. The purpose is two-fold, one, to provide more stability for the wall in high winds, which Cornwall is known for, and two, some of the vegetable beds will be situated in between these returns to give a more protected growing area for selected plants.
These returns go all the way around the garden walls and are spaced about 5 metres apart where possible and give so much extra stability to the wall build it was worth more work and expense, and anyways, piers would have to build into the wall as in any long wall, so it was not going too far out of the way and looks good for the beds running in between.

You can see the returns on this photo by the main gate.

This is the middle entrance to the vegetable garden by the hut.

There are three entrances to the walled garden, the South main gate, the middle West gate by the hut, and the North gate by the composting area. The North wall, although very long, was easier to build in the fact that the levels were pretty good so did not require any stepping of blocks to complete. We have another 4 trees arriving in January for the beds outside of the hut and we still have to bring up the rest of the chippings for the seating area, once those chores are done then it is preparing the beds for the summer with flowers and plants. We shall post photos of those once we are into the summer and there is something to take a photo of.
Paul still has two gates to make for the middle and North entrance before the wall itself is finished and then it is down to the last section of the wall to complete then it will all be done. It has taken many hundreds of blocks to build, and tons of sand for the cement, not forgetting the hard work in getting the blocks up to the garden in the first place, still nearly there now and we are very pleased with the end results.

By the North gate looking towards the hut.

North wall view to the composting area.

North wall from the fruit field with the hut on the right.

View along the new road to the second field with the North wall.

The last section of the walled garden

The last part of the walled garden to be built - ready and waiting for good weather.

Since posting this page we have progressed onwards and the wall is now finished, complete with 4 new gates, 3 metal, 1 wooden. We thought it best to update this to reflect upon our progress.

You can see on the photo to the bottom of this text that the wall is looking rather good with its scaled blocks and the metal gate nestled between the gate posts. Although the step through the gate has also been completed and there is a concrete pad on either side of the gate which keeps to entrance free from weeds and grass. 

The wall used well over a thousand blocks, is over 240 feet in length if it were stretched out, and averages about four feet in height. One strange, but welcome finding is that our local slugs and snails seem to find the wall not to their liking and they avoid it totally. Which of course is great for us as it stops further invaders scaling the wall and devouring our produce.
Paul thinks it may be the minerals in the silver sand that seems to deter them which is very high in silica, and this produces a chemical reaction, which you can see on the above photo where at the end of the wall there is a white seepage that comes out of the cement layer. It seems to be this element that deters the slugs, etc.