And so the brief Spring-like interlude comes to an end with a day of low cloud and drizzle. The weather really affects me, and while I try to remember that the sun is still shining above the cloud, somehow I still cannot throw off the feeling of sadness and heaviness that this sort of day brings to my mood.

For the last few days I had the opportunity to work in the garden and had the real pleasure of plenty of sun, and the bird-song that goes with it. I was busy and productive, but also took the time to just sit and enjoy the garden and the feeling of joy and ‘aliveness’ that I was experiencing.

Today is the flip-side to that, the other side of the coin that makes those sorts of days so very precious because they do not occur all the time. Today I am back at work and I also have to take my leave of the garden and work away for the rest of the week. I feel a sadness about leaving the garden that I feel when saying goodbye to someone I love- or perhaps it is more the sadness of knowing that for every day of joy and pleasure in the garden there are the days when I cannot be there and have to focus elsewhere. I actually know that I will enjoy London when I get there and will spend time  with people that I like (and love) doing things that are stimulating, interesting and important. But right now I am feeling the ache of having to let go of ‘home’ and go out into the world again.

I also do know that in life I need the balance between the peace and quiet of the garden and solitary activity, and the excitement and stimulation of getting out in the world, meeting people, sharing ideas and being socially engaged. Losing either would be a significant loss and I do know that too long away from ‘society’ has a bad effect on me making me restless and frustrated. It’s just that sometimes the balance feels too much tipped one way or the other and I certainly feel the need of more gardening time than I have been able to manage recently with all the working away.

So life goes in cycles, just as the garden does and the changes in weather are all necessary to make life, and the garden into a satisfying whole. We need the sun and we also need the rain, and life must be lived in a balance cycling between the different times, activates and states. I know this in my mind, but this morning I don’t feel it in my heart and I am longing for more sunny days.

Today I will walk to the end of the garden, visit the trees that I planted and soak in the atmosphere and be grateful for what I have and remember that it will all still be here ( with some subtle changes as the garden and wildlife do their thing) when I return at the weekend and I will love it all the more then for the absence.

I have discovered in the last three years that my tendency to be less than assiduous in the garden often pays dividends in terms of self-seeding and natural plant propagation.

The second Winter that we were here I dug out a brand new flower bed intending to fill it with perennials, shrubs and bulbs.

The hard work was in the creation and the first year the weeding was a nightmare with nettles and field bindweed trying to take control. However, I also had to pull out barrow-fulls of oriental poppies that came up in year one and overwhelmed my carefully selected and planted perennials.

In year two it was the foxgloves that made a big display, and what a wonderful sight that was ( until they all went over in July leaving empty patches).

This year it is Lychnis that has self seeded all over the beds and I am very pleased. Last year they were really good performers with deep crimson flowers and silver foliage, I’m happy to welcome them back. I also think that those flowers that self-seed tend to do better because they grow in conditions that suit them. In fact the Lychnis should do well in the sun backed end of the bed where the soil is poor and stoney and the fact that it is higher than surrounding areas means that it dries out very fast.

In the autumn I was very busy and failed to trim back some of the perennials and actually only really cut back what was offensive to the eye. I left the penstemons as they stayed ‘evergreen’ and looked quite healthy. The only problem was that they drooped and fell all over the place. This week in the spirit of getting on top of things I went to cut them back and found that they had spontaneously layered, striking roots from some of the stems. Hey presto I now have 10 extra penstemon plants without the bother of lifting and dividing.

So I conclude that often less is more, even in the parts of the garden, like the beds near to the house that I feel I should give most attention to. Laziness pays off and there is little merit in constant clearing and weeding. I now aim to think of weeding as an infrequent activity that I do to simply make sure that plants that I do want are not overwhelmed by those that I don’t- in fact don’t even get me started on the iris foetidissima that comes up all over the garden- I loathe it and it has to go whenever I get to it. Some weeds I can decide are wild flowers, some remain weeds.

…the second best time is now.

Apparently an old Chinese proverb told to me by my brother David Kesteven. Wonderful advice that I have taken up today when I planted 4 new trees; Two Victoria Plums, a Serbian Gold Quince and a Bramley Seedling. I have been renovating the orchard and wanted to extend it both in size and variety of fruits.

I am so grateful to my predessesor Stuart who, probably about 20 years ago, started the orchard of around 20 trees ( William Pear, Comice Pear, Conference Pear, Katy Apple, Cox’s Orange Seedling Apple, Spartan Apple, a Greengage, a Cherry and two trees with orange small fruits that I cannot identify).

The trees were quite overgrown and the orchard was over-run with nettles. Some of the trees were producing no fruits or the fruit was of poor quality. I have worked through, weeding around the bases of the trees and adding some underplanting (mainly daffodils which the rabbits don’t eat). Today I added some tete-a-tete daffodils, thyme and chives which I think may be unpalatable to the rodents ( although having said this they ate the lavender that I planted before).

My aim is to have an orchard that is both productive and a lovely place to be. We put our arbour down there (bought with wedding present tokens) and it is my favourite sitting place. I go there to find some peace and it is a good distance from the house so that it is far enough away to have it’s own atmosphere. In the Spring it smells wonderful with the blossoms and in the Summer it smells wonderful with the fruits. If I can find underplanting that the rabbits won’t eat, all the better. My ideal is an orchard humming with bees and the right underplanting can potentially keep coddling moths away from the fruit without the use of chemicals.

One day I plan to have a beehive down there to complete the scene and to increase productivity. I also wonder about fencing it in to keep the animals off the fruit ( I suspect deer stole my pears last Autumn when we were away!) and to provide a framework for soft fruits like raspberries and gooseberries.

The orchard is definitely my happy place.

It’s the Chinese New Year this weekend and recently was the old Pagan celebration of Imbolc, which is a time of year when the rumination and hibernation of the deep mid-winter become the intention and initial actions of the very early Spring. Imbolc was the time to name and recognise the resolutions of the New Year and to clear out the old to make room for the new.

I realised that I wanted to change my relationship with the garden, and also the nature of this blog, to reflect a new change in attitude and an exploration of the garden that takes in both external and internal dimensions of what it means to create and sustain this garden. I have been reading, reflecting and walking in my garden and questioning my attitudes and feelings about it and I want to use this space to explore further.

When I created this blog I was initially thinking about having a physical record of the changes that were occurring in the garden, seasonally as I got to know it, and also the changes that I was intentionally making. I was aware that the garden was a huge project and I wanted to create a progress record so that I could look back and see the changes that were often too incremental to notice at the time. However, at the risk of sounding trite the experience of gardening here has changed my attitude to the whole project; it has changed me as much as I have changed it.

So what have I learnt that has changed my approach?

The garden is too big to approach the task of gardening as I had in my previous garden.

There is simply no way that I can keep up with all that I would like to do in the time that I have. I cannot make flower beds the size that I would like them and then keep them free of weeds. If I did nothing but weeding every weekend I would still not beat the weeds, and anyway that is no fun. Ideas of neatness and the creation of a ‘show garden’ are not realistic.

That nature is a powerful force that cannot be controlled.

For a start there is simply so much wild-life. I love the animals that live in and around my garden and seeing badgers, foxes, rabbits and even deer gives us all considerable pleasure. Attempts by the previous owner to keep them out were only partially successful and the rabbits will eat anything and the badgers will dig holes everywhere. The deer nibble the tips of shrubs and the bark of trees. I could spend an enormous amount of time, effort and money to fence them out, but then I wouldn’t have the joy of seeing them and knowing that we live close to one another in a ( sort of) harmony.

Then there are the stinging nettles which grow everywhere in the margins of the garden and other invasive plants that constantly attempt to invade the space. I could spend every weekend pulling up nettles and digging out thistles and still never get rid of them. Which again would be no fun and would also (especially in the case of the nettles ) reduce the habitats of many insects.

That I get as much joy from walking in the woods at the end of the garden, where I do virtually nothing to cultivate and control, as I do from looking at the flower beds near to the house.

The woods are constantly changing and at present are full of snowdrops that are spreading of their own accord. I do nothing to interfere with nature in the woods and I am rewarded every year with a beautiful display. It is as though I am getting a beautiful garden ‘free’.

There is also a quality of beauty in the woods that is about being in nature in the raw that I go to again and again for peace and reassurance. As Lao Tse said ” Nature doesn’t hurry , but everything gets done”.

So what is my new intention for the garden?

To work with nature and not against it.

The idea is that anything that I do change in the garden  should not create extra work. Of course there will always be areas that are more labour intensive, such as the perennial beds and the cut flower/veg garden, but in the main I want to focus on the planting of trees and shrubs and ground cover and avoid the sorts of planting schemes that need constant maintenance.

 To create a garden that is a wild-life refuge.

I want to welcome animals and birds into the garden and if anything increase the number and diversity of the garden visitors. If the garden is to be a sanctuary for humans I also want it to be a sanctuary for animals.

To create a sanctuary for me and others.

Since starting to explore mediation and mindfulness I have increasingly experienced the garden as a potential sanctuary and space for peace and reflection. It is where I go when I am stressed and it is where I can sit and enjoy the beauty of nature. I want to increase this aspect of the garden and use it as a vehicle for my spiritual journey.

That gardening should be about nurture not about struggle.

So often gardening is approached as though it is an exercise in ‘taming’ nature and imposing control on a wayward piece of land. This can lead to gardening that is more akin to ‘housework’ than anything else. I really do not want gardening to feel like just another job on my to do list , an exercise in ‘being busy’. I want my experience of gardening to be more creative and liberating. Yes, there will be big projects and big changes, but I want them to feel gentle and as though I am restoring the garden to nature rather than fighting it.

That engaging with the garden can be part of a deeper connection with nature and the seasons and a tool for emotional integration and growth. 

Ok so that all sounds a bit new-agey but my experience is that since we have been here at the Old Railway Tavern I have felt more in touch with the seasons and the process of continual and cyclical change than ever before. The garden carries on and does its thing regardless of  what is happening in my life, but it also reflects my life too and the experience of the world that is connected to the seasons and weather. The garden is the space where I can re-connect with something more elemental in my experience and I want to use it increasingly as a place of refuge and for meditation.

So the nature of this blog is going to change to include more reflective material and ideas from my reading and other internal explorations. More like a nature journal than a garden record. If you are interested do keep reading and I’ll try to make comments more regularly, and I would of course welcome any comments from my readers. let’s talk about gardens and gardening as part of our experience of nature and personal growth, as well as appreciating the practical stuff of plants and plans.