Using old broken rubble in a decorative way.

.. or, how to make something lovely out of a pile of rubbish.

In one of my gardens, a range of old outbuildings were knocked down when the house was built, and the soil gradually built up over them.

This means that all along one side of the garden, I can't dig a hole more than about four inches deep without encountering a deep layer of rubble, which I then have to painstakingly excavate by hand.

The rubble goes on the rubble heap, along with all the various bricks that turn up from time to time.

One day, a couple of winters ago, I suggested to my Client that we could recycle this rubbish into a neat decorative circle around the old tree, in order to make it more attractive.

 Here's the "before" picture - one pile of bricks, one pile of rubble dug out over the past few years, and a tree surrounded by earth, weeds, nothing in particular.

Ta daa!

One circle of bricks, infilled with a layer of garden rubble, with the different colours used to create a bit of a pattern.

It looked so good that I continued the idea, making a short path off to the left to the leaf mould pens.

Nice, don't you think?