Major work on front garden...major back ache!

This is pretty much what the front garden in Norwich has been looking like for a while.  This is the right side before work started this week (seen rather obscurely through the bedroom window) A rather amorphous jumble of plants, overgrown and crowded and soil that hadn't had anything put back in it for a long while. 

Before

I hired a gardener called Lindsey to come on Wednesday and Thursday and help me dig out almost all the plants and put on them on one side for sorting out.  Lindsey is probably somewhere between 35 and 40 and very fit!   The weather was perfect on day 1 and a bit drizzly on day 2. She dug away for two whole days, then forked the garden over and spread organic fertilizer.   I was running back and forth making her very strong coffee and trying to get the plants sorted into two piles - chuck and keep.  Unfortunately Lindsey worked so fast that my plan to keep everything organised went slightly astray, and some plants were put in neat piles near the house on plastic sheets and others were put down on the edge of the road.   She heaved out all the flnts that make the edging and piled them up and left me with a bare garden of beautifully turned soil and a row of plants and quite a lot of wet, sticky mud on the paving and the edge of the road.   Not her fault that it drizzled all afternoon and I was thrilled with the blank canvas and began to think about a new planting plan. 

The blank canvas

Then I looked at the weather forecast and realised that snow and very low temperatures were coming on Friday, so despite a rather sore back and no help (Peter was away at a meeting) I had to cancel my pottery class and set to and get all the plants back in.   I worked from 8.30 in the morning to 4.30 in the afternoon.  Picking up plants, separating them and putting them in with a little encouraging bone meal.   Bend and bend and bend!   By the time I had finished I could hardly move!  

Just as I was putting in the last few plants, straightening up and scraping some mud from my glasses and face,  the neighbours' gardener arrived and came over for a chat.  She was checking their garden for what to do next.  Apparently they have a colour scheme...I was waiting for her to ask me about my 'colour scheme' instead she asked me why I hadn't cut back my epimediums*...I could tell straight away that she was a woman totally devoid of any sign reading skills.  Did I look as though I was in the mood for advice and gardening one-upmanship?  I smiled, but not with my eyes!

All the plants back in! 

So this is the picture at the end of the day.  Just a few plants left on the side of the road on the right.  The flints still in piles (need a strong man for that) and the mud still to be cleared away, but all the plants safely in before the freezing weather descends.    Not that you can really see them in this picture as they have all been split up and are rather small at this time of the year.  There are lots of buds though, so watch out for the 'after' pictures.    Should be a real change in a couple of months.

*Epimedium, also known as barrenwort, bishop's hat, fairy wings, horny goat weed, or yin yang huo, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Berberidaceae.