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.