You don't have to be mad ...

...but every new idea eventually leads to another bed to be dug!

At the end of last year the Design Committee decided that the 'wildflower' meadow wasn't working and thoughts drifted towards Piet Oudolf, the Dutch designer who popularised the use of grasses.  So, I started mowing the wildflower area, leaving two beds for the grass to grow naturally (and hopefully some wildflowers)

However, this simple idea became modified by the Head Gardener to include a bed with each grass block for some prairie flowers such as Rudbeckia.

So yesterday I managed to fire up the rotavator (after about 8 years!) and broke into the beds.

( have to admit it made me puff a bit!)

I'm not sure how quickly things will progress now, as we had 3 mornings of frosts (with a chance of more next week) and, what with this and our 2 weeks away in Taiwan, the production of seedlings has suffered.