2025 – sedum, sedum and more sedum
2024 was the year I killed off my social media. 2025 was the year I reaped what I had sown. Or at least took the consequences. But new shoots and all that. And sedum too. See below!
At the end of the day it’s about looking to the future, having faith in your abilities and look dwelling too much on the past.
Regrets? I regret none.
I was happy to remove myself from the dry stone community and especially the FB groups. Trying so hard to being part of the “scene” was too hard on my well being. Years of sitting on the outside; years of disagreeing with their rules was a toil.
The clique is welcome to their ball. I’ll continue to go my own way.
And then there was the social media itself. Monetising my FB page was cool, but the demands for more reels, more likes, more followers was relentless. I know the targets were there to be ignored, but Meta was very insistent. It’s hard to not feel pressured to post content.
The negative comments were irritating but I was finding myself looking at the photos I was posting for potential issues. It was ridiculous getting bothered by the internet experts were sitting at home negatively commenting on my images. But it became another element in my dislike of social media.
Added together with the virtually non-existent number of jobs that actually came from the posts, and it was not much of a leap to delete the pages and move on.
Of course losing 10000 followers on each platform clearly had a massive impact on my business web site. I’ve come to realise that my visibility on Google was directly linked to my social media following.
So now we’re into 2026, I’m trying to get it all back again. I have new FB and IG business pages and am making some effort to post content. And I now have a focus on producing content for this web site.
Life goes on, innit.
So what did I actually do in 2025?
I did actually do some work last year. It started off well with two great projects and then just got very bitty. Enquiries were definitely down but I had enough confirmed jobs and I was working with potential clients on another four big projects. Any one of these would have made the year a productive one but each one was shelved or cancelled – all for valid reasons. It was frustrating to have a good year just fall away. And of course, once we hit November enquiries always dry up.
It’s never happened that so many good jobs all cancelled.
Below are the jobs I did do.
Kinross back garden – dry stone bench, firepit, path and sedum cap
I built this seating area and firepit for a lovely couple in Perth and Kinross. They had seen the Newhaven bench on my web site and liked the design.
Their garden has this imposing berm with a 45 degree slope of grass. It was also meant to be full of boulders, so hard to plant up. We discussed a couple of designs and settled on the one above. The stonework was set back into the bank.
I’ve done various jobs with turf tops over the years. When it’s given appropriate care, the turf is great. But if it’s left to dry out, then over time the edges get windblown and the turf loses it’s shape. And if it really dries out, then the grass dies and the soil gets blown away.
I was keen to try sedum mats on a dry stone project as an alternative. The sedum is an alpine plant and so used to both poor soil and challenging weather. As well as providing cover for the wall, the sedum provides lovely colour through the Spring to the Autumn. This job was the first time I had tried the sedum and when I went back in the summer, it was doing well.
The stone is Alston stone from Cumbria supplied by Border Aggregates in Kelso. They also supplied the setts used in the edging and the path. The sedum is by Sedum Supply in Oswestry.
Stirling front garden – dry stone terraces, steps and sedum cap
A transformation of a very low key entrance and a steep earth bank occupied me from March to July. Working on my own, a lot of the effort goes into moving stuff about. I had a little compound set up with heras fencing to protect passers-by from the waller and me from the passers-by! It also made a restricted area in which to empty bags of stone. It was very cluttered for the first couple of weeks, but the more I built, the easier it got.
The design was pretty straightforward but the steps required a lot of head-scratching by both the me and my engineer client to get them right. Several versions of CAD drawings with precise measurements were produced before we (I) got it right. I try my best to be millimetre perfect but it doesn’t always work out that way!
One aspect of working with loose designs and an adaptable material is the chance to make changes on the fly. I had always planned to use a large boulder at the far end of the garden, where the upper and lower retaining walls converged. The client liked the boulder so much, he asked me to source more and build them into the walls. So we did. And they look great.
The stone is Alston stone from Cumbria supplied by Border Aggregates. They also supplied the paving used. The sedum is by Sedum Supply.
Collessie – new sedum top for the Wonky Wall
I built the Wonky Wall in Collessie in 2011 and used turf for the first time. After 15 years the turf was not looking at its best. I had spoken to Peter the client about the sedum I had used on other projects this year. So over a couple of sunny days, I replaced the old turf with the new sedum.
South Lanarkshire – dry stone wall rebuild and new mortared steps
A job of two parts. The first was taking down, straightening and rebuilding a chunk of the boundary wall at this property in South Lanarkshire. I had worked for the clients at their previous property, so it was nice to do more work for them.
The wall in question was a mess. Badly built in the first place, with a horrible mix of stone. Voids and no hearting had created a tottering pile of choss. I had to scavenge stone from around the property to get enough hearting to allow for a strong rebuild, and we brought in several tonnes of reclaimed sandstone to build the steps (see below), with the rest going on the cheekend and in the wall. I worked hard to build a strong wall if not an exactly beautiful one.
The steps were a little bit more straightforward. The original steps were in a dangerous state, especially to the family’s small children. They were removed and the old stone reused in the boundary wall where possible – lots of old mortar was dressed off. New stone was brought in and some lovely, smooth slabs used for the treads.
Rosewell – garden pond
Charlie the client had engaged me at least five times to work at his property – a dry stone bench, a crazy paving path, a base for his man cave and a path at the front of his house.
There was one small space in the back garden where he wanted the lawn gone and a pond put in its stead.
We marked out the space, he dug it out, placed the liner and did the electrics. I built the stone surround and made a simple waterfeature.
In and out in a couple of easy days.
A wonderful garden, where the hard landscaping I did provdes a fine backdrop to his lovely planting.
Renfrewshire – garden landscaping – low dry stone wall and crazy paving paths
This was a fairly easy job near to Paisley south east of Glasgow. A curved low wall with a flat cap provided stability for the lawn, two low edging walls created beds with curves throughout. And big, chunk slabby stone with grit brushed in between created the paving.
Working in the west of Scotland, especially in the winter means rain. My pop-up shelters got a lot of use!
Stirling – new stone steps
The last job of the year was replacing the steps to the back door of the property in Stirling that I worked on earlier in the year.
Nice and easy, great clients. Job done.
And that was it…
With the lack of enquiries, I had eked out the work I did have on the books. With work drying up, I pretty much had six weeks off over Christmas and through January 2026. The one benefit was that it gave my damaged shoulder some healing time. Crashing motorbikes and beating stone with hammers for 25 years is not a good combination. What will 2026 bring?
Well it’s already seen me head to the Southern hemisphere and a month working on a stonemasonry restoration project. More details on the work done for the Falkland Islands Museum and National Trust is one this article.
I’m going to make an effort with social media again, work this website and basically throw myself in marketing mode. There’s always hope, innit.
