MY LUNCHTIME reading for the last week or so has been a fascinating little volume of collected articles, originally written for the Guardian's Country Diary column over the last 100 years.

One article in particular caught my attention, written by Helen Swanwick in February 1920. She writes: "It is many years since vegetation was so advanced at this season as it is this year" before going on to describe flower buds on roses and elms in flower, together with Lithospermum, crocus, violets, Iris reticulata and primroses. I sometimes wonder about the modern phenomenon of climate change!

Global warming has dumped yet more rain on my garden this week, finally goading me into doing something about the regular flooding of a patch at the end of the top lawn. It has been so boggy that, for most of the winter, it's been impossible to reach the lower part of the garden without getting wet feet.

I have decided to make a proper pathway, and to drain the bottom of the lawn into the bog garden below it. Sounds sensible, doesn't it, though I began to have my doubts as I paddled about on the muddy lawn digging out a drainage channel!

I have laid an 80mm perforated plastic pipe, on a thin sliver of gravel and topped with several inches of gravel, under both the turf and the new pathway. The lower end of the pipe comes out of the base of the retaining wall and flows directly into the bog garden below, a tactic which I hope will help to keep this area wet in summer (there's nothing like killing two birds with one stone!).

Since we moved here six years ago, we have had a kind of policy of using materials that are already on site for any hard landscaping that needs to be done. This was easy at first, since our predecessors had amassed a fine collection of kerb edgings, breeze blocks, fence posts, paving slabs and various other pieces of stonework (no, I don't know why!).

Sadly, these are mostly used up now, but I have managed to scrape together most of the things needed to construct my path. The curved sections will be edged with old bricks, while the straight will be edged with the last of the thin kerbstones. I have some paving slabs, but have had to buy some matching, bog-standard slabs from my local builders' merchants to make up the numbers, together with a jumbo sack of pea gravel to fill in the spaces between the slabs.

I haven't done as much work as I'd hoped this week, due to the inclement weather, but I hope to be able to report back next week that there is dry access to the bottom of the garden. Watch this space!

A Gleaming Landscape - a hundred years of the Guardian's Country Diary is edited by Martin Wainwright and published by Aurum Press Ltd. ISBN 1-84513-182-7 Jobs for the gardener this week...

Finish any of your own winter' jobs before the season starts in earnest.

Check all trees and shrubs that were planted in the autumn and winter. If they have been raised by frost or loosened by winds, firm them in again with your foot and stake if necessary.

Lift and divide any herbaceous plants that have grown too big or died out in the centre. Discard any worn-out bits and replant, after enriching the soil with garden compost or manure.