Something odd has been happening this Summer, probably due to the drought, but many of my flowering plants seem to have stalled through much of June and July and are only now getting going.  At least there is something for the bees:

The cosmos is clearly doing well and some dahlia’s that I planted in the cutting patch are just coming into flower along with the chrysanthemums. Self seeded borage also provides some flowers for the bees although they are drying up now. The sedums around the garden are just starting to open now.

However, the perennial sunflowers that I grew from seed this year are not only yet to flower, but seem to have a rather unusual growing habit, looking like a row of triffids by the drive. I am not sure what has happened there.

Perhaps the fact that that new bed is essentially made up of compost means that it is too nitrogen rich so making lots of leafy growth and no flowers as yet although there are plenty of buds? I should add potash from the wood burning stove I think for next year.

One thing I hope to do in this garden is to have something in flower all year ’round, bioty for interest and also for the insects. I’ll see how it goes.

Me and the garden have ‘control issues’ and it is affecting our relationship. I am constantly unsure;  what is the ‘right’ level of control that I want to impose on this garden? If creating a garden is about changing a landscape, how far do I want to take that, and how far do I allow nature/the garden to take a free hand?

Every day I feel the tension between wanting the garden to be exactly the way I want it, and also realising that I cannot control it in that way, without making my gardening experience into a long round of chores and obsessive tidying. For me, trying to impose too much control on this far too big garden would mean that I couldn’t walk around it without noticing the weeds and the jobs yet to do. I would lose the joy and playfulness that I find in gardening  and become involved in some long struggle to subdue it’s essential nature. I really don’t want doing the garden to become like tidying or cleaning  the house, something that feels nice once it’s done but feels as though it is taking up leisure time.  And in any case the ‘tidy’ approach to gardening has never really been my way. Control freakery is not really part of my character; the least I will allow is that I can be bossy, but only because I have all the best ideas :-)! I am trying to work out how my essential temperament translates into gardening?

I would say that my gardening style is ‘loose’. Even when I had a much smaller garden and could realistically have had it under control, I didn’t.  I loved the serendipity of the self seeded plants and the casual effect of allowing plants to find their own spaces and ways of growing. I still feel tremendous delight when I notice a self sown tree or shrub popping up where least expected. I love that nature changes the garden all the time whether I do anything or not. I often repeat the Lao Tse saying “Nature doesn’t hurry, but everything gets done” and I remind myself of this when I feel that I am getting ‘behind’.

But then again, letting nature have the upper hand sometimes makes me feel confused about how to plan ahead, and especially how and when to clear and prepare planting areas. As I described, I am currently using some concrete blocks to edge the raised beds in the kitchen/ cutting flower garden. This is going rather well, although the weight of the blocks means that I only do it for about an hour a day, as I don’t want to over-strain my back.  As I dig the trenches to add the blocks I throw the soil onto the middle of the beds and think about how it would be a really good idea to clear the beds, add compost and manure and cover them ready for next season. I feel that if I was ‘serious’ about gardening I would be clearing up the beds more generally, adding manure and mulching bare soil, essentially making preparations for the Spring. But then I notice all the little plants, self-seeded pot marigolds, chives and foxgloves and there are still cosmos plants flowering away (although not as well as I had hoped). If I cleared the bed I would have to pull them up and it seems such a waste. Ok, so there are weeds there too, but what about the ‘good plants’. It would feel like punishing the whole ‘class’, just because a few ‘children’ are badly behaved. My essential problem is that I don’t want to destroy anything to make way for anything else and then I get stuck because I have to clear spaces for new plants and it would be a good idea to improve the soil as well. I just can’t bring myself to throw plants away.

I suppose I am still trying to find my own philosophy and attitude to gardening as well as learning techniques that will work here. I am enjoying reading about permaculture and the importance of working with nature and the general principle of less effort and more results and I am hoping to work that into my gardening routines. I like the idea of mulching rather than digging and building up the soil rather than disturbing it. I also wonder if I am essentially somewhat lazy and would rather have the grand idea than spend all of my time pulling weeds. So the  garden and I are working on our relationship, sometimes I have all the ideas and it has to go along with me, but sometimes it is in charge and my role is to simply stand back and admire.

We have plenty of strawberry plants but this year tasted not one strawberry. Despite many many flowers, the cold late Spring coupled with some very ingenuous rodents meant that by the time I was thinking about harvesting they were starting to disappear. It turns out that the squirrels had every one. Once I realised who the culprits were, I put netting over the plants,  but undeterred the squirrels stamped all over it, burrowed under it and carried on helping themselves. So I am wondering, are strawberries worth growing on my plot?

The strawberry plants however are completely prolific and seem to thrive in the conditions I have here. They have burst the banks of my. admittedly poorly edged raised bed and range out across the kitchen garden. Part of me likes the wildness of this and admires the sheer energy of the plants that root almost everywhere, even on the paths, however I feel that if I am to raise a crop adequately next year I need to reign them in and create a bed that I can defend.

Ok , so scruffy doesn’t even cover it,  so I am re-using some (extremely heavy) concrete blocks from down the garden to create better edges to the bed. This will give more height and I can also get deeper soil. This part of the garden has very shallow soil and dries out fast so making deeper beds with edges that will last ( unlike the current wooden ones that are rotting and falling apart)  is a priority.

I’m quite pleased with it, both as a practical solution but also the fact that I am re-using materials that I already have. I looked at the price of raised beds online and was shocked, and while I do have some lengths of timber I am not so confident in my DIY abilities to make new  timber edges. However the  blocks are so heavy that I think it best to only do a bit at a time. I did this length today and that was enough for my arms and back. It is a good Autumn job though as it makes me nice and warm and I can get on with it from time to time.

Of course, in clearing up the spreading runners I now have a many new strawberry plants that I have spent the wet afternoon potting up ready of next year. Given that this bed of strawberries was already established when we came here nearly four years ago it is probably time to create a new bed with fresh plants, perhaps even using another area of the kitchen garden and putting another crop in this bed.

It was the warm weather I think, but we have a bumper ‘crop’ of grapes this year. I say ‘crop’ but this doesn’t seem quite the right word, as I never intended to have grapes as an actual product; they simply appeared as the unintended consequence of having a grape vine. Indeed the grape vine has always seemed a bit of a nuisance to me as it marauds over the pergola by the pond, creating far too deep (and low hanging) shade to be useful and being so prolific in its new foliage and tendrils in the growing that I feel as though I am doing battle with it. It blocks the pathway, makes the pergola virtually inaccessible and climbs up into the nearby birch tree.

Indeed last Spring I cut it back heavily, sadly rather too late in the season, and it ‘bled’ watery sap all down my arms and into my hair. My aim was to create something that was less of a tangle, more in control, but as with all these things, when you prune you tend to stimulate;ate growth and it came back fiercer than ever.

I understand that if I had actually wanted a proper crop I should have thinned out the bunches so that the plant’s energy could go into growing a few bigger grapes rather than so many smaller ones. As it is I have many many small bunches of rather small seedy grapes, although they are quite sweet and certainly prolific.

So my next question is, should I propagate another vine from this one to clothe the pergola on the front of our new cabin, to be build later this year? I need a deciduous climber to provide shade in the summer but not hinder the sun in the Winter. A grape vine might be a good choice with its stunning foliage and fruits. It would also potentially be a plant for free and I know that this particular cultivar grows well in this garden. However, perhaps I will end up doing battle with that  vine as I do with this, and regret my choice. Also, it might be better to have something with flowers and a scent? What do you suggest readers? What do you think are the best deciduous climbers for an exposed south facing position?

On the theme of my new found love of September, this is the view from my new bench in the middle of the garden when I stopped for a coffee.

The wind was blowing but it was mild. I wish I had thought of sound as the blowing of the trees and the chimes were perfect.  Life is beautiful.

The drought was really hard on the garden and especially the grass- it doesn’t really deserve the term  ‘lawn’ ! The green bits mostly went brown and the weeds did better than the grass. The only saving grace as far as Ben was concerned was that it didn’t really grow, and so there was no mowing! Now we have had a little bit of rain ( I am still watering most of the garden) there has been some growth, but there are plenty of dead patches where the thatchy old growth and moss took over and then died.

So, the usual advice is to scratch up the brown bits with a rake, re-seed and then wait for the gaps to fill in. Nice idea except for two issues. Firstly the size of the task ( given then sheer size of my plot) and the fact that it is boring. I’m afraid that gardening as maintenance is not my idea of fun. I remember Monty Don once saying that if you want to enjoy your garden you should do as much as possible of what you do like and as little as possible of what you don’t. Lawn- care is not my idea of fun.

Secondly, even if I did like lawn care it would truly be a waste of effort, as every day I come out to new holes in the lawn and scratched up areas, curtesy of the badgers and rabbits.

Ok so perhaps the badgers are secret guerrilla gardeners and are attempting to cover a task that they know I’m unlikely to get around to any time soon- but I rather think not :-).

I am working hard on not being cross with them and not being ‘precious’ about my garden, although I do allow myself the odd grumble when they actually dig up newly planted areas! I like having the wild animals share my garden and I know that I must expect the odd bit of damage. Perhaps I need to think about better boundaries, especially nearer to the house, where the animal damage is more visible. Maybe another day when I have run out of jobs that I like :-).

September is when the orchard really comes into it’s own and the next three months will be spent gathering and storing apples and pears. I feel so lucky, and grateful to my  predecessor Stuart, for planting such a rich variety of trees, although I often wish I knew exactly what types are here. Some are fairly obvious, but others I still ponder over.

There are three types of pears; William’s, Comice and Conference. The William’s pears are now ready and yesterday I harvested a large bowl full.

There are also two types of apples which are ready now. One I cannot identify (the bowl on the left below). It is the first time I have had a crop from this apple tree that I thought had died. I cut back lots of diseased growth two years ago, leaving just a shortened trunk (essentially it was coppiced). I had planned to get rid of the trunk when I could borrow a chain saw, then to my surprise last Spring, there was some leafy growth and this Summer apples. Not many, but at least a dozen of reasonable size. Even with my apple identification book I cannot work out what they are.  Perhaps I need to get to an ‘Apple Day’ this year – I shall save a couple in the fridge. That is, if they don’t all get eaten; these apples are crunchy and juicy with a good balance of sweetness and acidity.

On the right is ‘Katy’ or ‘Katya’, which I understand is an apple developed in Sweden. Every year without fail it gives a huge early crop around mid-August. The problem is that it looks (and smells) much better than it tastes. It is always so exciting to have such a heavy crop early in the season and in the first couple of years I gathered them in with delight, however after a few days they remained uneaten, going woody and dry in the fruit bowl. Last year Lois and I made some reasonable cider with them, having noticed that there is a cider actually called Katy and while it was OK, it still had that rather dry, acidic (even metallic) Katy after-taste.

This year, to my shame, I just let the apples drop to the ground, many of them rotting quickly and attracting the wasps, so yesterday I raked them up (making three wheelbarrow loads) and dumped them on the perimeter of the wooded area. I figured that even if we don’t like them, perhaps the deer and badgers would, and with luck would stop them coming and helping themselves to the nice ones.

So, what to do in the future? I hate to waste food, but I am also averse to eating not-very-nice apples, or taking the time to make not-great apple juice, when we have so many lovely apples that I really enjoy, such as the Cox’s Orange Pippin, Golden Delicious and Spartan. Ben suggested that we cut it down to make room for a better tree, however this also seems a shame as the tree is so beautiful and healthy and I also understand that it is a good pollinator for other fruit trees. Perhaps, with it’s good looks and lovely smell I should simply use it for display or maybe it would be better cooked? If you have any bright ideas please let me know…

The usual advice about garden planning is to live with a garden for at least one year before making any changes. The idea is that you need to know your garden, it’s climate, it’s soil and the way that light falls throughout the year in order to make the best use of the space. If you move to fast then you may simply be imposing unrealistic expectations on your space and creating a design that will be impossible to sustain.

We have actually been here for four years next month and I feel as though the garden is now so familiar that it is almost part of me. At least in the warmer months, it is a rare day when I don’t walk to the end of the garden, often with a cup of tea or coffee, sit in the arbour in the orchard, dream big dreams, and feel connected and more grounded. Indeed the dreaming is almost the best bit- the idea of what I could create and how the garden could look in 10/20 years time. The tension is between thinking ‘too big’ with ideas that would be impossible to implement, or thinking ‘too small’ and simply tweaking  what is already there. With a garden this size there are so many possibilities, which is both exciting and daunting at once.

We have done plenty over the last four years, renovating  and fencing the kitchen garden, clearing the orchard and opening out the middle garden with the wisteria walkway and new planting. I have created a formal front and side garden with lavender hedging and lollipop bay trees as well as the bed to the side of the drive. However the next year is going to see bigger changes and I am very excited about my dreams for this space.

My ideal is to have a garden of many parts, some more formal and some wilder, but all in tune with nature and the local area. This garden, with it’s wild population of rabbits, foxes and badgers will never be the formal pretty garden that you often see in magazines unless I manage to secure a tight boundary all round the plot.  The time and expense that this would create, along-side the constant guarding of the boundary from undermining rabbits barely seems worth the challenge. In fact anything too ‘precious’ and pretty risks constant attack from the badgers and rabbits especially as they dig holes and scratch up the grass in large patches. For example, I had an idea that after the drought I would scarify and re-seed the brown patches, but what is the point when one night of badger activity has left large patches already scarified and uprooted? If I try to create anything too perfect and formal I risk a constant battle with nature and I don’t want to spend each walk in my garden feeling annoyed with the badgers for simply using my garden as a forge site.

So what to do? The best thing I think is to go with the wild feeling. Nothing too formal but plenty of interest and variety. I plan to fence off some areas, mainly where I plan to grow food, but leave others more open. The new cabin build will create a great deal of  extra top-soil that I am going to use to create some landscaped areas and also some raised beds, so losing the feel of the ‘flat field’ towards the bottom of the garden. I plan to fence the orchard and add raised beds for asparagus and soft fruit.

My ‘dream’ is a rustic, blowsy orchard with planting, inspired by permaculture under the trees , a bed for asparagus and rhubarb, and soft fruits inside a perimeter fence of chicken wire but also decorative branches for the rustic feel. Cutting back and coppicing  the over-grown hedgerows will create plenty of branches and wood and my aim is to re-use and recycle, much as I hope to re-cycle the topsoil from the cabin foundations. While the middle part of the ‘bottom’ garden will remain an open ‘field’ space for games ( and camping when we have one of our parties) the end orchard and wood will have a different character , more secluded and also productive.

There will also be an area to the front of the new cabin that will need planning and planting so that the outlook from the cabin is pretty, if semi-wild. I am currently considering grasses for the fenland/ prairie look.

So there is much work to do and I fear I may not be able to pull it off. With a garden this size it is easy to dream, but every job takes a long time and much energy and effort, not to mention, at times, expense. However, as long as I see it as a gradual and steady process that has no completion date but simply advances with the seasons bit by bit I hopefully will not be overwhelmed. Part of me thinks there should be a self-imposed schedule, but another part of me resists turning this into job. I want this to be a labour of love and I want to enjoy the process just as much as the outcome, which means going with the flow and going with my energy rather than pushing against it. I hope in the next year to be able to work little and often rather than only having the weekends and I think this may help, working when my energy is high and thinking and dreaming when I am tired.

Yesterday was cloudy and slightly wet and as I weeded the middle garden I failed to notice my increasingly damp back, although it was not cold and after our hot summer was quite pleasant. However, today is warm, sunny, breezy and beautiful and I realised that September is actually wonderful. I had decided that I was going to be on ‘light duties’ because working so hard yesterday has taken it’s toll on my back and hips, and so I found myself often pausing and simply soaking up the beauty of the garden. It was easy to sit and dream, rather than working hard, and I realised that I felt deeply happy and contented.

I don’t usually  associate September with happiness. As a child, September was the end of Summer and the start of school and that deep and pervasive anxiety of changing classes and worrying about ‘doing my best’. It was a time of uncertainty and vigilance, making sure you always had the right kit with you and the first page of your exercise was neat and correctly set out, not to mention the re-formation of friendships after the long break and finding that everything had changed. If the weather was fine it was barely noticed, cooped up inside in a scratchy new uniform in stuffy classrooms.

In my twenties there was a brief time when September meant holiday time, making the most of lower prices once all the children were back in school, however once I had children myself it was back to the old anxieties and the responsibility and hard work of helping the children to make the re-adjustment back to days at school, away from the comforts of home and family. And then the biggest adjustment of all, taking them to university each September and the sad, empty feeling that had to be worked through and adjusted to each time. Suffice to say September has always felt like a time of loss; loss of family togetherness, freedom from routine, the time to play and the loss of long evenings outside.

But this September I get the sense of how this time of year can be a time of new beginnings. Ben’s new job at the University and a reduction in the work of our business means that I will potentially have more time to spend in the garden. I hope to be able to spend at least a couple of afternoons a week gardening which will give me so much more scope, especially when it comes to the big projects, as up until now I have only been able to work at weekends and there is a limit to how much physical energy I have each day.

The new build also will inevitably change the shape of the garden, creating a new focal point and then there is the practicality of dealing with the top soil and creating new garden ‘areas’. I also plan to work on the garden boundaries and also to update the orchard area, adding raised beds for asparagus and soft fruits. So much to do and I am really very excited. So this September is the start of my new gardening year – watch this space!!