Recycled Eco Buildings and Wildlife Friendly Food Forest Garden. Mosaics and Glass Bottle Walls.
For the last couple of days we have had almost constant rain and we decided it would be a good time to finish up the interior of our tree house so that friends and family can enjoy it. It has been a few years since we started building it and the large beautiful rowan that was growing next to it has since blown over in a storm. At the moment it has hops and a lovely climbing rose twining their shoots up the structure and the hazels are slowly growing up to replace the lost rowan.
We have to admit to a love of colours. Our house is full of them. We definitely do not subscribe to a less is more approach when it comes to decorating our house. We are firm believers in that vibrant colours enhance mood and create a happy and relaxed atmosphere in the home.
It has been a year since we built our conservatory and now we are not sure how we ever managed without it. Every morning we drink tea in there and when we have guests it is the place we are most likely to congregate in.
Our regular readers might have noticed a rather big hole in the place where September’s blog posts on the Greener dream should be.
There is something very special about having a hideout high up in a tree. You feel slightly removed from all worldly worries and commitments. You can climb up your ladder to rest, dream and spend some time suspended between the sky and the ground. When we moved into our cottage almost five years ago, all boundaries were planted with laylandii trees that blocked out light and prevented the hazels, oaks, hollies and rowans from thriving.
We are very happy to finally have the stove mosaic in our new conservatory completed. The second hand stove is in place for use during very cold winter weather as a backup system to provide heat and protect sensitive plants from dropping temperatures. During the past winter we had no need for it but it is nice to know it is there and it can also be lit to make the space extra cosy and comfortable for midwinter gatherings.
We have written about willow before. It is truly an incredible inhabitant of the land. We have friends with a river on their land and they have a lot of willow planted along the river banks. They were kind enough to let us coppice some of it for our new willow fence and plant supports. We also coppiced our dogwoods growing close to our cottage and ended up with a selection of beautiful young stems for weaving.
If you are considering building a low wall for a conservatory or greenhouse, this might be a viable option for you. We built the front wall of our conservatory with tyres, stones and some chicken wire for very little cost, both to us and the environment. To make the wall stable it is important to ram the tyres with earth and spend a good bit of time pounding the earth with a sledgehammer. You can read more about building with tyres in this post here.
This is possibly our last post in the series about our roundhouse construction. We have now reached the top of the building and will tell you about our roof. Reciprocal roofs have probably been around for millennia or at least from the 12th century in China and Japan.
Our cottage before the extension.
Carrots can be tricky to grow. We have failed quite a few times. Our soil is full of stones and on top of that we have raised beds made up mostly of well rotted cow manure. This combination is great for most of our crops but the carrots do not like it one bit.
thegreenerdream 