Building work on our house necessitates a redesign of the garden this year and the workmen are due to arrive any day soon.

It is easy to become sentimental about a garden especially one that has developed over a number of years and some time has been spent regretting the changes that have to take place over the next few months. However I have shaken these feelings off, or at least pushed them to the back of my mind, and begun to dig favourite specimens from the bed that will soon lie beneath the new garden room and patio.

Rosa mundi has been cut hard back, it had grown two metres high with a crop of neat leaves at the top of each stem but nothing, not even buds below. It looks a sorry site now, a clump of short bare stems transferred to a pot.

This is a strong-growing rose making its removal from the bed difficult and in fact the long stabilising root going deep into the soil had to be cut after a fruitless struggle to get deep enough to remove it intact. Fortunately the main rootball came out complete and should be able to sustain the plant until it can be replaced in the garden in the summer.

Daffodils and bluebells came out quite easily in a large clump complete with clod of earth and were simply put elsewhere in the garden with virtually no root disturbance but an eryngium was impossible. The long, straight root going deep into the soil could be cut but I suspect such treatment may produce a plant that takes years to recover and it might be wiser to replace it with a new one.

Other plants like the hardy geraniums proved easy to remove, with buds of new growth indicating their position and neat clumps of roots that fitted snugly into the waiting pots. The black leafed elder planted less than a year ago was also simple to dig up, the few new roots undamaged by the spade and the original rootball remaining almost pot shaped. I also took the opportunity to cut the stems back to low buds, the best thing to do in early spring with these vigorous shrubs, which can grow very large if left unpruned.

The bed waits now for the builders and I am determined not to dig up anything else but these sunny days are producing new growth and I begin to remember what hides beneath that soil.....

Weekend catch-up

Wisteria side shoots shortened last summer should be pruned back now to two or three buds but don't cut off flower buds.

While in pruning mode, cut late flowering clematis hard back to a low pair of fat buds. Many clematis will have started shooting especially those in warm sheltered gardens so it is a job that needs to be done sooner rather than later.

Updated: 08:54 Saturday, February 22, 2003