It’s early in the year to start thinking about the garden and the pool, but I need to put the ideas in my head down on paper, and plan the whole project properly.
It’s going to be complicated, as the garden lies between two properties of two neighbours, and the natural flow of rainwater passes from one neighbours garden, runs through mine and onto the 2nd neighbour.
In the past I’ve been told after heavy rainfall, my garden floods by water running off the first neighbours, although I’ve not seen this as we’ve had little rainfall.
I noticed that old owners of my house have put in drainage exits from the garden which evacuate onto the 2nd neighbours land, that then drains away by a sort of improvised guttering.
The flooding business will be my main concern. I’ve spoken with each neighbour individually and both are sympathetic to possible changes to adapt the water flow across our gardens. Thats a good start, as a pool and garden can start to be planned around the channelling needed to keep the area free from flooding in the future.

I think to cross the garden at the narrowest point with a sunken gutter or large underground pipe between the two neighbours will solve the problem. This can be dug out at the same time as the pool. Lots of problems with that though, as where it flows from the first neighbour I want to put a pool fountain like this.

Therefore it will have to be well planned to hide everything I don’t want visible later.

On Thursday 12th January I’m hiring a powerful metal detector to scan the whole garden. It’ll pick up large objects up to 40 cms deep, so for those of you who know the secret history of Mademoiselle Pagès (the house owner until 1952) , will no doubt be interested in what I find! The myth goes that she’s buried something of value somewhere, so before the diggers are brought in to dig the pool out, I’m doing a quick pass. Of course I’m not expecting to find anything at all, but you just never know what might turn up!