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Coxes Farm (Gardens)
(Text as at 04/04/2020 00:14:24)
- We are fortunate to have about half an acre of garden - including a large pond - surrounding our house – Coxes Farm, Billericay, Essex. This allows Julie to display her gardening skills (thankfully, since my interest in gardens extends no further than walking and sitting in them).
- This page provides as full a timeline as a random collection of photos allows. I've not had time to select and process many of these, so this page is very much work in progress.
- It also includes some snowy photos of the locality taken before we exchanged contracts (February 2012).
- Finally, it includes a few photos of the pets, for want of a current alternative home.
- The major developments to the garden were:-
- Dredging of the pond (October 2012)
- The landscaping of the smaller part of the front garden, ruined by developments to the outbuildings, including the replacement of a box hedge by a rockery and adding gravel to the drive (June 2013)
- Photos of the house itself appear on two other pages:-
- Photos of the house during and subsequent to the recent repairs appear on this page1.
- Photos of the house prior to the recent repairs appear on this page2.
- For my developing thoughts on the maintenance of properties such as Coxes Farm, see my Note "Tottering Towers & Listing Buildings3". It doesn't include any reference to gardens, though there are constraints on what you can do within the "curtilage" of a listed building. Theoretically, you can't even put up a shed without permission, and even then there may be constraints on its design.
- Click here4 for a couple of technical remarks on the webpage.
2019 - February
- A few random photos of the tree in the front garden. We think it might be a holm oak, and that it is very old. One of Julie's friends, who is a horticulturalist, is seeking to identify it from these photos and samples of the leaves.
- The estate agent's photos showed a sister tree next to the drive, of which only the stump remains. The vendor must have cut it down.
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2018 - December
- The pond - full and in good shape after the summer drought!
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2018 - February - Eucalyptus - Removal
- The Eucalyptus tree being taken down. Not the best of photos - expand them (by clicking) to see what's going on.
- Nothing happening on the house.
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Tree-surgeon removing lopped branches. | 
Can you spot the Tree-surgeon up in the branches? | | | |
2018 - January - Eucalyptus
- The condemned Eucalyptus tree in all its dangerous glory!
- During the December snow, a branch fell off and blocked the road, causing a speeding ambulance to skid into a ditch and need rescuing by Terry's tractor.
- Further branches fell off later. Also, its roots block the drains, and it's too tall for its proximity to the house, say the insurers. So, it has to go.
- Nothing happening on the house.
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2013 - July
- All nice and tidy.
- Looks like we had a gathering of some sort.
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2013 - June
- After landscaping the smaller part of the front garden, ruined by developments to the outbuildings, including the replacement of a box hedge by a rockery and adding gravel to the drive.
- The garden seems very green, as does the pond, which was suffering from a plague of duckweed. This was cleared - remarkably enough - by our small flock of captive ducks, which have come and gone. Now moorhens seem to do the job.
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2012 - December
- Part of the garden is devastated by spoil heaps and drain excavations - consequential on the conversion of the outbuildings.
- The rest of the garden seems in good shape for the time of year.
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2012 - November
- The pond almost immediately 'caught' duckweed after it had filled up post-dredging.
- A few photos of Henry as a puppy.
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2012 - October
- The pond was a stinking mess when we moved in, so we decided to have it dredged.
- The bottom photos show a 15-ton digger being delivered. Its treads ruined the lawn, as can be seen in some of the photos, though the worst depredations were across the lawn to the far gate where the spoil-truck was parked.
- I don't seem to have proper 'before and after' photos. Those below seem to be taken during the dredging operation, starting with draining the pond.
- It seems to show that the pond isn't very deep.
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2012 - April - Ducks
- Stray ducks on the banks of the pond, before we got our own ducks and before the pond was dredged.
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2012 - February - Snow
- Nothing to do with our gardens, but parked here for want of a better home!
- Photos taken in the snow when walking around Coxes Farm Road and Outward Farm Road.
- I'm not sure of the exact date they were taken, but they were most likely taken before we exchanged contracts and were uploaded to SnapFish on 5th February 2012.
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In-Page Footnotes:
Footnote 4:
- If you're using a mouse, you can hover over the image to see the date / time the photo was taken, the photo filename and the source of the photo.
- More useful narrative commentary will be added in due course when I've got round to entering it; it will also appear additionally - and more usefully - below the photos.
- The JPEGs immediately displayed on this page are 'medium size'. Click on the image to display a full-sized full-page photo (or sometimes just the same medium-sized one displayed full-page).
Previous Version of this Note:
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Reference for this Topic |
Parent Topic |
| 04/04/2020 00:14:24 |
1283 (Coxes Farm (Gardens)) |
Theo Todman's Blog |
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- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
