Restoring our neglected garden has involved a lot of hard, strenuous work - heaving, dragging, digging, chopping and building - but one of the most pleasing and satisfying improvements was possibly the easiest and simplest of all. The transformation of an awkward eyesore into a display of summer flowers provided the best splash of colour anywhere in our garden.

After clearing an area for the base of our poly-tunnel we were left with a large, unsightly "swiss roll" of torn, heavy duty ground cover membrane filled with the soil and weeds that had grown over it. 

The roll lay down the length of tunnel and was impossible to move by hand. It had been back breaking work rolling it there in the first place and it was going nowhere.

So what to do? Make it into a feature. Better still, assign it as a project for the part time Student when she emerged from her two weeks of quarantine after returning from the US.

Armed with a large knife, several packs of flower seeds and a watering can she set to work cutting holes through the membrane, pulling out the bramble and other roots that still lurked she set to work.  After several hours of work spread over two or three days it was done. Now all that was needed was to keep it watered and wait.

Three weeks later shoots began to emerge, but were they her flowers or were they weeds? 

She decided to wait and see how they developed. 

Mm ... quite a lot of weeds, but maybe some were wild flowers - they could stay. Better wait a bit longer and in the meantime rely on the gardening fairies to pull up the nettles and docks and water it in the dry spells.  By the end of July there was quite a good display, the fairies had done a good job, and by early August it was in full bloom.  The ugly eyesore had become a colourful flower garden. How easy was that?