#11 Sites & soil

This morning, on another project, they started digging for a pool. Before development 30-40 years ago the area was a known for its rose growing industry so when the excavator dug his first hole we found a layer of ash (from wood burning greenhouse heaters) and wonderful clean soil. It's a problem for the pool, but wonderful for filling in deep interior areas that will be augmented with a custom planting mix and will ultimately become the planting pockets in the rockery. Off I went with a full dump of this brown gold, 10 miles away to the Mansion in May site. This saved the soil from being dumped in some land fill and my pockets from having to buy and truck soil in later.

Notice how grey the soil is--its the ash from the greenhouse stoves.