I cannot believe that I haven’t written here or shared any photographs since February. So much has been happening and we have been so very busy that it has been hard to keep up, let alone find time to document what I have been up to.

And this is the amazing thing that we have been up to- we are so in love with our new cabin…

The building project has completely altered my relationship with the garden; as the centre of gravity has changed. I realise as I write this how infrequently I now walk all the way down the end of the garden, to the woods.

The middle of the garden, that used to be an area that I walked through on my way to my favourite seat in the orchard, has now become a garden in itself and the new terrace in front of the cabin has become a favourite place to sit, so that I go to the orchard comparatively infrequently, and paradoxically it now feels further away, while the upper middle garden with the wisteria walkway and kitchen garden, between the cabin and the house, has become the area that I walk most often.  It is as though the addition of the cabin has changed my whole relationship with the garden, in the way that when another child is born into the family the whole constellation and atmosphere changes.

While the cabin was being built I struggled to love the garden, especially the bit in the middle and all the mud and disruption meant that I often avoided going down the garden. It went from being my ‘happy place’ to being a place I barely recognised. Then when the cabin was finished it demanded all of my attention and care ( like a new baby- to remain with my metaphor) and the rest of the garden was sadly neglected. I almost felt guilty as I walked past areas of the garden that before had received so much care and I also failed in large part to propagate seeds, especially for my vegetable garden.

So now I am playing catch up and trying to imagine what I will do next year to bring it all together. As usual I imagine that next year it will all be different and I will be on top of all the jobs and create the perfect garden with just the right balance of wildness and cultivation…maybe.

In October 2016 I planted 100 crocus bulbs and waited with excitement for my carpet of flowers to arrive. Sadly by the following February the show was rather disappointing. I reckon that badgers had dug up and eaten many of them.

So in October 2017 I planted some more- about 50 or so, and I covered the area with exceedingly spiny cuttings from my berberis hedge- hah that showed them, apart from the fact that thespicky branches blew around the garden and kept having to be re-positioned!

Anyway it was all worth it as the crocuses have come up so much better this year. I am hoping that they will spread, as the snowdrops have, and that by the time I am old there will actually be a carpet of crocuses to enjoy.

In this unseasonably warm February they do look wonderful.

One of my plans this year is to create a fence around the orchard, to protect my trees from gnawing rabbits and deer, and to allow me to underplant to create a permaculture garden. I was interested in how to do this cheaply and in keeping with the wild nature of the end of the garden.

I saw on Pinterest something called a ‘compost fence/hedge’ and decided that would work well as a boundary between the woodland area and the orchard. It would support wildlife as well as costing nothing, as I already have the fence poles and I always have plenty of branches/brash that I need to get rid of.

So yesterday, using my new auger I created a row of posts. Ok so not as neatly executed as it could be- but that is hardly the point with such an informal fence. The wonder was that it only took me about an hour to put in 12 posts. The first time ever that a garden project has been easier than anticipated!!

Today I started filling in with branches and other garden debris. It is a work in progress, but you get the idea. Best of all, all the ladybirds that have settled and hidden in the crevices of the branches remain relatively undisturbed and it will be a useful habitat for many more next winter. It may even do something to deter the bigger wildlife from coming through- although I am under no illusions that it will stop them entirely and I am planning to take more stringent measures on the other three sides involving chicken wire as well as hedging plants.

I think it’s coming on a treat and I can keep adding to it as I cut back the hedges at the sides and also prune the apple and pear trees. As a permaculture project, with the idea of using what you have and throwing nothing  in the garden away I think it is pretty good.

The sun has been out for two days now and the snowdrops are fabulous. Yesterday they all opened up and their scent hung in the air. I also noticed many honey bees visiting, although I couldn’t get one to stay still enough for a good picture. Spring is most definitely in the air.

Meanwhile further up the garden our builders have been busy with the roof. It’s t-shirt weather for them, if not us, and the whole site is looking much better. Harry has been busy sweeping out the water and what with the new roof we might imagine living in there one day.

With new enthusiasm I spent some time in the woods at the end of the garden, mainly gathering kindling for the fire and also doing battle with a large bramble that was threatening to overwhelm a very old greengage tree at the edge of the woods.  I am collecting the cuttings in blue recycling box ready to add to my rough makeshift ‘hedge/fence’ once I get going with that in the next few weeks.

The snowdrops are really getting going now, although they are not quite at their peak, so more to come I am sure. I am so pleased to see them gradually spreading up the garden and I think this year I will move some more clumps up to the middle garden.

I also noticed at least four ladybirds nesting on the underside of a teasel head.

If ever there was an argument for leaving ‘a mess’ over Winter this is it. In fact when I was clearing the old bean canes a couple of weeks ago I found lots of ladybirds hiding in the crevices and felt bad for demolishing their home. I couldn’t say I was ever the most tidy gardener, but you have to clear up sometimes, and this often means evicting wild-life. I can only comfort myself that there are plenty of other habitats left messily intact.

What a difference a day, and one good idea, makes! Yesterday the sky was grey and I was full of gloom, missing my garden and feeling the burden of a too long winter. I realised how much I miss walking down the garden as my favourite way to relieve stress by taking me back to nature and reminding me of all that is not man-made but persists regardless of human concerns. These days the garden does give me that feeling, except right at the end in the woods with the snowdrops, and I need to pick my way through rather a lot of mud and chaos to get there.

But today the sun is shining, albeit rather weakly, and the weather is mild. As I walked up and down, filling the bird feeders, being outside felt like a blessing rather than a test of endurance (no jacket and gloves required!) and I could imagine the arrival of Spring and the way that the garden transforms when the temperature rises.

Yesterday I also had an idea for how to create beauty quickly – a wildflower meadow! The building works have stirred up the ground in the middle section of the garden and the top soil is very thin in places with little organic matter- just the right conditions for a wildflower meadow, where the soil needs to be somewhat poor and the lack of competing grasses allows flowering plants to establish. Basically the builders have done the preliminary work for me by killing the grass and churning up the mud. The conditions of the Somme that lead to the famous poppy fields have been re-created right here in Cambridgeshire. If I get on with it in March we could be looking at a sea of poppies by early Summer, a thought that brightens my mood and quickens my energy again. Now I simply have to work out a plan of where to spread grass seed and where to sow my meadow and work out quantities to buy.

Every year at about this time I start itching to sow seed, but it is generally far too early. I end up with etiolated tomatoes and beans that are long and inter-twined before the ground/weather are ready for them to be planted outside. However, I read that jalapeño plants need a long growing season and that some important gardeners have sown them already, which of course was red flag to the bull!!  And, as I was already there, filling seed trays with compost, it only seemed sensible to sow a few other things such as hollyhock, nicotiana, Larkspur, verbena bonariensis, penisetum ‘tail feathers’, and some salad leaves for the window cill.

As to whether sowing these seeds amounts to ‘sowing the seeds of love’, I can only say that when I said over lunch that I was going to spend the afternoon sowing seeds the song was immediately recalled and then played loudly, as we all cleared up the kitchen. Thinking about it though it seems apt. Right now the garden is a sea of mud and the weather is cold and icy and I really don’t feel as in love with my garden as I usually do. Indeed yesterday, when I had planned to get out there and start some jobs and clear up, I lost motivation entirely and sat in bed instead looking at social media and feeling miserable and unmotivated. I was certainly not feeling the love that usually gets me out there every weekend.

However, this morning I found that the stipa tenuissima that I sowed last week, and which I hadn’t expected to germinate without a program of being placed in and out of the fridge, was actually sending up shoots. The excitement of new growth and the miracle of seed germination really set me up for the morning.

So now the only south facing window sill that I have in the house has the stipa, some mustard seeds that need using up and a tray of baby salad leaves;

And the propagator is newly set up as well- yay!

I know that I should actually be clearing the land, laying compost and filling the raised beds, as well as starting my big projects such as fencing the orchard, however for those I need better weather and also the energy that comes in Spring when the sap is rising and suddenly I can imagine the garden in high Sumer. Right now small jobs and small successes are better aligned with the small amount of energy that I have available.  It’s OK to take small steps when the big ones are too overwhelming and I know that the excitement and energy will come back once I have successfully ‘re-claimed’ my garden from the builders and it feels properly mine again.

Perhaps it is hard for me to commit myself to loving the garden right now when it is so often occupied by strangers who pile stuff around any old place and move machinery over already torn up land.  I have sad jolts of recognition at times when I see new damage and apart from the snowdrops there is little that is beautiful and new right now. However, I know that this will change and that when I get back to re-claiming and planting it up, it will be a treat to have many plants already raised and ready to go in. So that’s what I will do- make plants and look forward to the Spring.

The building project is in full swing and the garden is suffering- or is it me that is suffering watching the destruction of part of my ‘eden’? Of course, to put down foundations and to run services down the garden there is an inevitable quantity of digging, and with the wet winter weather and conditions special to this place (more later) it is incredibly messy and muddy.

I notice that the builders were very careful when digging up and re-laying the drive, so that we hardly knew they had been there, but nearer the site, where the features are natural and not man-made, they have been less attentive. Indeed when digging and laying the foundations (see above) they were pretty tidy. However, for many reasons, putting in the Biocell (cesspit) has been a challenge and the struggle has had a wider impact on the garden. I try not to be upset, knowing this is the nature of the process, but it is hard to hold faith in the return of the beautiful garden that I will create later.

Having asked the groundwork team to pile the excess soil in the garden, with raised earthworks to be fashioned in to a mound and windbreak, there has been even more extensive mud and mess, as they have been driving tractors up and down the middle of the garden, creating water filled ruts at least 2 feet deep in places. Oh my beautiful land- will you forgive us?

I can only smile at the irony of my wish to apply no-dig and permaculture principles in this garden, as it gets chewed to pieces and the ground is both churned and compacted. But I similarly know that nature will re-assert itself when the builders have gone and I will have the opportunity to manage the land it to create the garden that I want having been given a blank canvas or open ground. The groundwork team promise that when they finish they will smooth the site and I will be able to spread grass seed. I can only hope that the weather will help to establish a grassy surface before the Opening Party in June, otherwise there will be rock festival conditions in the garden!

A Lesson in Geology

What we have learnt about this land is that we have a fairly shallow silty soil above a layer of gravel, which is resting on a deep seam of basalt. The hole for the Biocell gave an opportunity to see this for myself

The silty top layer means that the moment it gets wet and disturbed it quickly becomes a sea of mud. It is like clay but less sticky, just slippery and unstable. Underneath is a layer of gravel, which means that the top layer can quickly dry out. However, beneath this is the layer of basalt that has caused the groundwork team no end of trouble with the Biocell. Basically, the basalt is extremely hard and the ground water sits on top of it. Once they were down 3M they hit water and had to pump continuously to get it dry enough for the concrete. In building terms it means that our cabin is sitting on a very stable base that is unlikely to be affected by tree roots and shrinkage in dry weather. What this means for the garden is that the high water table supports trees better than anything else, as once the roots get down to it they never dry out.

Kevin from the groundwork team said that basically this land used to be like a beach, mostly under shallow water. Basalt is igneous rock that comes from volcanic activity usually under water. Being that we are officially a ‘fen edge’ village, presumably we were on the edge of the large expanse of water that made up the fens before it was drained.

Given the high water table and the proneness to flooding I cam considering digging some ditches in the lower garden to act as drains, much as they have in the local fields. I could then plant with local sedges and willows to give a fenland effect, in keeping with the local environment. The wildlife would love it and it would be another interesting aspect to this garden.

At present however my thoughts for the area around the cabin are rather less ‘wild’. The cabin will have black clad walls, like an old style barn (but much sharper) and I intend to plant Himalayan birch trees for contrasting effect. Now that I know that trees will not disturb the foundations I can even go quite close. Then I shall underplant with stipa grasses and salvia or cat mint- both of which do well in the local conditions.

I also comfort myself with the fact that the snowdrops are coming up in the woods and I am also working to clear the greenhouse and vegetable garden. I focus my attention on the areas that I can work on, and keep thinking about and planning the new areas. Despite the mud and chaos this is actually a good time for such garden/building works. The groundwork team will probably be gone by the end of next week and soon I will be able to plant up in time for the rush of growth in the Spring. I can even take advantage of the availability of bare root trees and shrubs which are cheaper and establish more quickly. As I walk down the garden I try to turn my mind away from the mud and towards my gardening dreams for the future. As with life in general, holding faith in the future is part of gardening, as is trusting nature to re-assert itself to re-create a balanced ecosystem when man-made disruption has passed.

2019 is going to be a big year in the garden. The cabin will be finished and a whole new garden must be planned and planted around it, as well as the areas adjacent where there has been much digging and new earth to be incorporated. I am both excited and daunted by the prospect. I am also developing the orchard area to incorporate a raised asparagus bed, raspberry and other soft fruits and underplanting beneath the trees. So much to do and I wish I had more time. However I will resolve to;

• Keep gardening fun in the process, not just the result. I want gardening to be something that I do for the love of it, not just lots of work towards an outcome.
• Garden for me not for anyone else. It is wonderful to show people around and have the garden enjoyed by others, and I am not immune to admiration, but if I look ‘outwards’ too much I become aware of all that I haven’t yet done. I feel that the garden is ‘untidy’ and I start ‘clearing up’ as though the garden is an untidy house rather than a space controlled by nature. Gardening should be a release from ties and obligations, I want it to be therapeutic and calming not just another chore.
• Remember not to overdo physical work the last thing I need is more aches and pains. Gardening in moderation is the key- a bit every few days if possible.
• Recycle and focus on sustainability following permaculture principles, use and re-use as much as possible. I am some way along with this, but I want to get further. This garden creates so much ‘waste’ in terms of cut back material and weeds and I need to use the branches etc for fences, barriers and poles and the weeds for compost. Stones and old pavers can be used to make rough paths. There is a use for almost everything I have on site.
• Grow what I love and use what I grow. I love flowers and will continue to develop my flower garden as part of the vegetable plot. I also want to use more of the apples and pears next year as this year I was too busy and a lot got thrown away.
• Love my garden as it is. This garden will always be a place where badgers dig up the grass and rabbits munch the plants. Deer will eat bark and squirrels will have all my hazelnuts. Nettles will grow at the edges and brambles will colonise from next door’s plot. It will be wet and saturated in the Winter and a dry desert in the Summer. It will be disorderly and wild but also beautiful and natural and it will be my refuge and my joy.

I have always liked the liminal time between Christmas and New Year; a time when the usual passage of time seems to grind to a halt and there is the space to go inwards and attend to what is in your heart and imagination, rather than the everyday concerns of work and household routines. Indeed you are positively encouraged to think and reflect about the past year and what is to come in the next. The midwinter solstice is traditionally the time to discard what is old and no longer serves us and to make ‘resolutions’ for the New Year. For gardeners it is the time for planning, making up plant lists, ordering seeds and preparing the ground and greenhouse for the next season. Indeed more ‘gardening’ happens in the mind than in the actual garden, given the unwelcoming weather conditions and short days. In December and January I do far more gardening in my imagination than I do in the actual garden.

This year I had a couple of books by Monty Don (and his wife Sarah) and I have positively glowed with the inspiration and passion for gardening that comes through in his words.  I sit in the warm, by the fire and imagine the garden that I am going to create here, and the love and passion that I will devote to my Easterneden, just like Monty (and with similar results of course!), and I almost lose sight of the fact that gardening my plot is always going to be so very different and there is a large and daunting gap between the garden of my imagination and the real garden.

Yesterday, filled with the excitement of the garden that I will create in 2019 I pulled on my boots and went out to begin measuring up the area around where the new cabin will be so that I can start to plan, and I was of course hit with the heavy sense of reality, the size of the task and my fear that I will not be able to live up to all my dreams. The gap between the garden of my imagination and the real garden was huge indeed.

The foundations are laid and the ground team are digging large holes for the septic tank and soak away. I have asked them to pile the earth on site as I have dreams of creating undulating mounds and interesting earthworks on my very flat and in some ways featureless plot, however this has meant that they have been hauling the earth up and down the garden creating huge ruts and a sea of mud and deep puddles. As I was laboriously measuring out with a post and surveyors tape my boots kept getting stuck in the mud and I stumbled and tottered around feeling flustered and overwhelmed. My dreams of the new garden around the cabin and even the interesting mounds and windbreaks further down the plat seemed so very far away. With a heavy heart I wondered whether I could ever create the sort of garden that I have in my mind…

But the trick with gardening, as with life I suppose, is to do just what is in front of you and to have faith in the future overall plan. It is so very easy to get discouraged by the size of the task and fall at the first hurdle. Actually I usually fall at the second, the bit between the big plan and the ultimate dream and the first practical steps that must be made to realise it. I am good at the dream and I love the process of creating ideas and making up plant lists but then I’m faced with actual digging and planting! But I also love digging and planting and enjoy some heavy work  once I get started, it is just getting over the bump of reality and keeping on going. Today the garden is a sea of mud, by June it will be a proper, if immature, garden. The groundwork team have promised to smooth out the ground and spread grass seed when they have finished and the foreman says that he will pile the earth just where I want it, so now I need to finalise my plan. More planning…just what I like…