My "new" established garden full of rocks just und

Sunflower

Hello,

My first post! So, we are lucky to have a large enough garden in Galway city, it measures about 45ft width and 25ft length. The house is about 20yrs old and so we have some great established plants, mostly trees. The problem, most of the garden is north facing, though I must stress the end (45ft) gets sun in the morning and evening, from about 3pm or so. There is an Alder (I think - has catkins now and lots of bumblebees) at one corner and a two more trees I haven't identified yet at the other end. We also have horrible old Gorse tree that is mostly woody now, which I'd like to take out but would be open to saving. Inbetween there are, among others, a few very old blackberry bushes which I like, but they are so old should I forget them??
I don't want to be a question-quigley here at all; in fact my main problem is that when I start to dig around these long established plants all I get is rocks. Just a few inches under the surface everywhere - rocks!! The legacy of builders in the 80's who just loaded soil on the rubble left behind.
So my question - should I pull as many rocks as I can out (some are massive!!) and add new compost or will that disrupt the established plants. I don't care for the gorse and would get over the brambles but I dont want to damage the trees - the birds love them (as do I) and they really frame the garden. I'm afraid of disturbing the soil and regretting it later.
Money is an issue (when is it not), but we're a young couple who are dying to get stuck in - just don't want to make a hames of it.

Please, apologies for the long post, it's my first, and if anybody feels a picture would help I'll try to upload it - no promises though in that respect.

Sunflower

PS; One plant we inherited is a massive fushia, it's so big by now (over 10ft), can I prune it hard or should I leave it - would rather keep it massive than to lose it (yes, I am question -quigley...sorry)

Sive · Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 5:04 pm Post subject:

I'm no expert here, but I would imagine that if you can, you could slowly take out whatever smaller rocks you find, one at a time.....I can't imagine this would harm existing plants....quite the opposite I would have thought.
What does anyone else think?

Liparis · Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 6:21 pm Post subject:

Shouldn't be a problem as long as you ensure you fill those wholes full with soil/compost and don't leave too large an air gap round the roots. The alternative is, if it aint broke, why fix it? Although all those stones do provide places for pernicious weeds to root making it very difficult to get them out with trowel etc.
Bill.

medieval knievel · Sessile Oak Tree Joined: 03 Sep 2007 Posts: 318

i'd imagine that the time that is best to lift the stones is rapidly coming to an end - probably best to leave any root disturbance till the winter (which admittedly is when the soil is hardest to work, and the days are cold and short, so i'm talking from the plant's viewpoint here).

Sunflower · Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:08 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the tips, I was thinking time is not on my side either but just spent the afternoon pulling some. Some are so large though that I think boulders would be a better word for them. Think 2ft x 2ft firmly lodged just under the surface they weigh a tonne!! but we're going to use them for something else at some stage.

Thanks again for your help Very Happy