Back in February when I planted the three new orchard trees, the lower half of the garden was waterlogged and I feared they would drown. Our garden is heavy clay over gravel and almost completely flat, so that when it rains the water just sits there, puddling under the grass and encouraging a deep layer of moss. In the surrounding fields and the building sites of nearby Northstowe, and the A14 roadworks , water lay in huge puddles and the balancing ponds created to reduce flooding were full to the top. This part of South Cambridgeshire looked like the Somme with mud and water everywhere.

Scroll forward 4  months…

and today we have had NO rain for over a month. My four water-butts have been empty since May and I water the new trees weekly from my wheelbarrow, tottering down the long garden, and I pray for rain. Nothing is growing, many things are withering and the grass is brown and crunchy under foot.

The only plants that look happy are the nepeta, lavender and other ‘mediterranean’ plants , although my young bay trees will need water soon and are looking unhappy.

In the winter my thoughts turn to plants that will cope in waterlogged conditions, such as willow and fritillaries, while in Summer I am glad for the plants that thrive in the hot and dry. I suppose that if I want to reduce the time and effort spent in watering (not to mention the waste of precious mains water) I will need to work out what will survive in our local extreme conditions and expect to lose some plants each year. I carefully nurture the plants that I planted in the Spring and hope for the best for the others.

So this is climate change I understand- wetter winters and hotter dryer summers. Gardening, at least in this, the driest part of the country, is going to have to change.

Planning the middle garden is turning into a bit of a ‘thing’ as you might have observed. I have so many ideas and I change my mind with the wind.

I am now back with keeping the wisteria walkway as it is, as well as other paths.  I then thought that I can create a different style garden on each side. To the left, under the pine tree, which now has ferns and bamboo I am thinking about creating a sort of Japanese garden. Indeed, standing by my acer in a pot by the front door I also realised that I could put the acer there and make it a largely foliage garden with an eastern theme.

On the other side of the wisteria walkway is a now empty plot measuring 12m in length. It is a sort of triangular shape, being 1 m wide at the bottom but 9m wide at the top (house end). I wondered about making a sort of formal ‘knot’ garden with lots of little paths after talking with Lois about the fun she had walking in the little paths in my Mum’s front garden. I love a sort of ‘maze’ only I’m not sure I have quite enough room? I also have a very small currently redundant sundial that would sit beautifully in the centre of a small formal garden like this. So this is the fresh idea. However, I would need to plan it properly and perhaps buy many many little box plants next winter to put in. In the meantime perhaps I should just chuck some seeds over it of wild plants etc. It would be nice if something other than nettles came up and I have a ‘bee mix’.

Anyway, watch this space, as you have now realised my ideas change like the wind. This is the ‘trouble’ with having so much space; when you can do anything you don’t know what to choose! I want a number of gardens in one I suppose and that is not completely unrealistic, however I also don’t want to create too much work. Perhaps I should lay the whole thing to grass and simply add shrubs and trees- but then it is such fun imagining and creating and I don’t want that to be over…

It’s funny how every year I am surprised by the first spell of warm weather; it’s as though I can’t really imagine the garden springing (sic!) back into life even though I know cognitively that it will happen. It made me realise how much gardening is a sort of ‘act of faith’. You carry out actions that will be rewarded some time in the future and there isn’t really any certainty about that either. In a sense you have to be future-focussed, without being future dependent, and at the same time you need to enjoy the process.

I was so pleased that the summery weather lasted until the weekend as I was able to get out on Saturday for a concerted attack on the perennial bed that I failed to finish weeding earlier. In a sense I was glad that I waited until now as it is much easier to see what I want to keep and what I want to take out- a few weeks ago the identity of some of the plants was not clear. As with the other perennial bed, my ‘planting plan’ leaves much to be desired. I wish I could be more orderly and structured about it and plan proper planting combinations and colour schemes, but apart from trying not to mix yellows and pinks and having ‘hot’  and ‘cool ‘ colours together, I haven’t got very far. I feel that this is something that may evolve over time and as Monty says, you can always move plants if you don’t like them where they are. My problem is an issue of editing- I don’t like to throw anything away and if a plant self-seeds somewhere I feel bad about pulling it out- unless I can be sure that it is a ‘weed’.

On Sunday, feeling much more tired and stiff, I gave myself light duties in the greenhouse, sowing many many seeds. I sowed three types of bean ( monte cristo, deliniel and runner) , two types of courgette, mixed salad leaves, basil, mint, sage and cosmos. I realised that up until that point I hadn’t really felt like sowing seeds as I hadn’t been completely emotionally convinced  that summer would be here and therefore my motivation was lacking and only lasted as long as my boredom threshold (which is short even in the garden). In the hot weather there suddenly seemed like no time to lose. Funny how the weather affects you like that. Today by contrast Spring seems to have gone away again and it is hard to remember how the hot days felt.

I also tidied the hot south facing bed by the driveway. It is looking wonderfully colourful with its wallflowers and tulips.

I also added wires to the wall as I am planning to train the fig tree in espalier form against the wall and also introduce morning glory flowers for later in the season. I also sowed some sunflowers in the greenhouse for late summer colour. This is the bed that can be seen from the road and is also easy to access and so I am hoping to keep up a seasonal display most of the year with bedding plants and a few perennials. Of course the tulips can stay where they are as the ground is so hot and dry.

Last week I went to my local plant nursery and asked about hedging plants, only to hear that I am too late for bare-rooted plants and that container ones are much more expensive. I was disappointed and thought I would have to postpone my plan to make a new hedge until  next year. However, I then realised that I actually have a number of potential hedging plants coming up in various places around the garden, they were just in the wrong locations.

So today I took a hazel that had been ‘planted’ in my veg patch by a kindly squirrel, a couple of hawthorns that just appeared in neglected flower beds, a beech seedling, a spindle (I think) and a few field maples (all similarly appearing in neglected beds in other parts of the garden).

I then dug a series of planting holes along what we call the ‘rabbit-proof hedge’ that runs across the garden halfway down and serves to divide the garden into the area near the house and that around the cabin ( more on that later!) and beyond. My idea is to make a double thickness hedge with a variety of native plants to support wildlife and create a visual boundary and privacy for the house and cabin. My aim is for it to be wild and natural and so planting a fairly random selection makes sense, and also from an ecological and sustainable angle, the use of plants that have freely already appeared in my garden is good and  also deeply satisfying.

So here is a part of it I made today,

Ok so it is very rough and I should have dug a nice trench and weeded it all and mulched etc etc, but I know that in the current situation if I make myself do things ‘properly’ that will also mean slowly and the things just won’t happen at all. I also reason that these self-seeded plants should be pretty tough and if they aren’t well then, that ‘s kind of tough. I did give them some nice free manure and I watered them in well. I’lll se if they need weeding and mulching as the season progresses, indeed this may be a good use for all the grass clippings that ben creates with his mowing.

My plan is to carry on with this re-location of self-seeded plants to other parts of the garden, for example in the area just prior to the orchard, where the dead trees were, and where I want to extend the hedgerow that has already been provided by the busway people to a sort of shrubby area coming across the garden , making another windbreak and achieving another sort of wild area.

Today I felt well enough to get out there and do some stuff and it occurred to me that with the limited time I had available the best thing was to just get on with it. I needed to plant out these poor homeless plants, confined to pots or temporarily heeled into a holding bed in the veg plot. I remembered something that Monty Don said about planting schemes that you should just try it, just plant things and if you decide later that it isn’t working then move them. After all my prevaricating about the middle garden why not simply put things in the ground and then if it didn’t look good  as the scene develops then move them later. I needed to switch of the part of me that wanted to get it all ‘right’ first time and switch on the part of me that just wanted to get it done. I know that the plants will be happier in the ground, especially as I have some nice free manure from across the road and so I can feed them mightily as I put them in the ground.

So, I got my bamboos and ferns and made a start under the large pine tree in the middle part of the garden. Ok, so there are gaps that I will need to fill and it looks a bit sparse at present, but I can work on that.

I like the black bamboo near to the white of the birch and I am planning more white birches to add later near to this space. Also I am thinking that I may add lily of the valley among the ferns or some other flowering plant that can manage shade.

Then I planted my clematis armandii. I am a little worried that it won’t be sheltered enough here so I planted the Daphne on the windward side of so that hopefully eventually it will provide shelter from the cold winds. Both are also evergreen and have scented flowers in the winter making that a good destination on sunny winter days.

In situ the plants of course look very small, but I was expecting that and I have to keep in mind that they will grow and a good plan takes account of final size.

And as Monty has said, if they don’t work where they are I can move them…

The ‘Beast of the East’ has certainly set us back a bit this year, which in many ways is just as well given how behind I feel in the garden. Ben did the first grass cut yesterday and the hawthorn hedge is only now unfurling it’s leaves. The Horse Chestnut tree also only opened it’s buds this week and the Birch trees remain brown.

Looking at some of my photos from last year I would say that the plants are about two weeks behind where they were last year. Oh well, I am sure that they will catch up. As Lao Tse said ” Nature doesn’t rush but everything gets done”, a saying that I always find most comforting.

What is disappointing is that although all the daffodils are now out, and therefore not much use for picking for the house, there isn’t anything else that is ready. I do have a cut flower patch this year and some of the tulip buds are coming up but they are not really long enough to pick.

Oh, and another thing, for the third year in a row we appear to have no frogspawn in our pond. I often hear that the frogs will find us, but they don’t seem to be happy to make the long slog here. I do think that for the first Spring we were here the pond was not a very hospitable environment- it was full of dead leaves and not much else. Having dredged it a bit and added pond weed and marginal plants I was hoping that the better set up would attract some adventurous  amphibians. The nearest water is a ‘balancing pond’ the other side of the busway and perhaps all that concrete puts them off. I am tempted to go out with a jar and see if I can find some to bring across. Maybe later.

For many reasons, mostly to do with having too many commitments and latterly, being unwell, I have not been able to spend the time in the garden doing things as I normally would. At this time of year when there is so much to do this feels doubly difficult and troubling. I have had to reduce my activities to the bare minimum , things that I cannot possibly not do, like raising tomato seedlings and sowing seeds for flowers later in the season, but I have not been able to take on the big projects or look after the garden as I would want to.

In the small amounts of time that I do have however I have tried to at least get out into the garden to appreciate it and I have also been thinking about my garden a great deal, so much so that it has on occassion stopped me sleeping at night. I find myself thinking about the deeper issues of ecology and spirituality and what that means to me when I am in my garden, whether or not I am actually gardening. What does it mean to garden in an ecologically sound way and how being in my garden puts in me touch with my deeper feelings and beliefs.

On Friday night Ben , Lois and I attended an event called  ‘Dark Mountain’ which was a performance mixing music and reflections, coming to terms with such issues as climate change, inequality, the lack of sustainability in our current life-styles and the effect of the knowledge that our children will not have better lives than we had. What to do in the face of the potential despair that this might cause? The main speaker suggested that one thing we can do is to attend to things that will last after we are gone and things that are real and authentic. I thought of my garden and creating an environment that will be a legacy for the future, not just a pretty picture or ‘stage-set’ for my life.

I thought about how being in my garden is nourishing in a very deep way. How at times of stress, anxiety and even anger a walk around the garden gives me a fresh perspective and comfort. I thought about how when I am away ( which has been a lot this last 12 months) I miss the garden and feel literally less grounded. I feel ‘at home’ in my garden and at the same time I feel transported as I notice all the things that it is doing without my effort . it has a life of it’s own that I am part of, but not in charge of.

So why should being outside in nature, especially the most ‘natural’ parts of my garden be such a rich experience? I thought about some of my most memorable experiences as a child. Times when I felt joyful and at peace. Apart from times with my family and friends these times were often when I was  in nature and fully immersed in plants and the environment;

• I remember our garden at Cheltenham Road in Peckham and hot summer days playing with the plants- making ‘peas’ out of muscari seeds, cabbage from bergenia leaves and ‘perfume’ from rose and marigold petals. The garden was somewhere where we could explore and play, imagine and pretend.
• I especially remember early mornings at Lark Rise where my maternal grandparents lived; going out alone in the garden before mum and dad were up and listening to the wind in the trees and exploring corners of the garden that seemed mysterious and hidden. I remember the smell of early morning air and the sense of freedom of exploring alone and unseen in a garden that felt huge and wild.
• I remember at Peckham Rye park how me and David would disappear in all the little paths through the shrubbery so that we were hidden from the grown-ups and could pop out and surprise them.
• I remember when living in Bath how we would explore those ‘liminal places’ in the shrubs at the edges of parks or wild land by roads, always looking for the hidden and unfound place to make dens. The smell of earth and the damp coolness that the sun never reached.
• Then later on my A level Biology field trip spending all day outside searching for insects , snails and other  wildlife. The feeling of being outside the classroom and spending each day in natural places.
• And finally in the woods at the bottom of my current garden, or climbing over the back fence onto the busway verge and going to find hidden places by the side of the busway ( latterly to fetch willows). The sense of going to places that others do not go to that are not ‘for’ human beings but designed to support the local wildlife and natural environment.

I notice that what all these places and experiences had (and have) in common was some sort of feeling pf personal connection with nature and wildness. A sense of seeing something or being party to the existence of other living things in a personal way. I realise that I have some of my most intense ‘spiritual’ experiences when I am in wild places (and in that I do include my garden).

So for me gardening is about creating a place that is sort of cultivated and sort of wild. A place that reminds me of all the nature alive all around us. It’s about finding my place in things.

Watching TV I also realise that there are different ways of approaching the garden. Lois and I watched Alan Titchmarsh presenting ‘Love your garden’. It was OK and Alan is pleasant enough, but it was about creating a sort of ‘picture with plants’. Like the garden was an opportunity to decorate your space- like ‘Changing Rooms’, but for gardens. The garden becomes a stage set for your life , a back drop and gardening is the thing you do to maintain that, just as Alan and the team created it. Then I watch Monty Don and the series ‘Big Dreams, small spaces’ and this has quite different feel. Here people have a concept that they want to execute and we find out who the people are, their skills and personalities. It is about gardening as a personal exploration and self-development and it is far more satisfying all round. The people are part of the gardens and the gardens resemble the people.

So what should my garden resemble? What is important to me? Wildness and hidden places have to feature somewhere and the sense of nature getting on with things as I watch, rather than something manicured and controlled. I don’t want my garden to be a series of jobs to get done, but a variety of places where I can sit and watch. I want to gather fruit and nuts and I want to pick cut flowers but I also don’t mind a few weeds and some places which are frankly a bit messy. And I want somewhere that will grow and develop as I grow and develop so that when I am old and can’t dig all day I can still enjoy watching it getting on with being what it is, my small patch of the surface of the planet .

Much has been happening since my last post in March, although in many ways not enough has been happening gardening wise. On 25th March, Steve came with his digger and cleared the middle garden, taking out old rotten railway sleepers and the roots of conifers that my brother had chopped down previously. The remit was to make the area ‘gardenable’ and he did a good job. While he brought down sleepers and roots to the end of the garden, I looked after a huge bonfire to get rid of the waste. The fire was so huge and hot it smouldered for three days thanks to the creosote in the sleepers and my constant shoring up- the thing was like a volcano!

So this is what was left, a lovely cleared space ready for the new garden to be planted…

Compared to the overgrown dark place before it is so much more open and light. it also led me to coppicing back the shrubs just adjacent to this space, in the middle of the garden- shrubs that had become overgrown and badly shaped and needed renovation.

The side effect of this has been that for the first time since we arrived, you can now see right down the garden, almost as far as the orchard. In fact looking down through our new bi-fold patio doors, for the first time you get a sense of the size of the plot. In the manner of these things the photo doesn’t really do it justice.

Suffice to say, as I am writing this siting on the sofa in the living room, I can see the rabbits running across the garden over 100 metres away (little buggers!).

This has caused me to revise somewhat my plans for the middle garden, which I had though of as a secluded secret garden with a winding path and many shrubs, now I am thinking of a similar space but one that allows a vista to run through it keeping the view down between the trees. I have also been buying plants and now have a black bamboo, ferns and a clematis armandii to add to the mix. To say I am a little bamboozled by so many contrary ideas is no exaggeration. I really have not known where to start and have lots of plants in pots sitting around waiting to go in. Compounded by little or no time to garden this has lead to a state of pre-occupation, while also a sense that much else in the garden needs to be happening ( weeding and perennial beds for example) which isn’t. I am learning to enjoy the process and not be too hard on myself- this is after all the work of a life-time and should be joyful- not a job. More about this in the next post where I get all philosophical and new age-y ( watch out Auntie Cordy!).

 

I think I now have a working plan for the middle part of the garden. To start with I spent a good deal of Saturday measuring the plot and making a plan of what I intend to keep.

You would think that this was easy- a simple case of measuring what was where in relation to the boundaries. But OH what a boring headache it was! It had all the aspects of a job that I hate; I had to be careful and accurate, while repeating the same actions over and again, remembering numbers and writing them down. Then when I got to drawing it out there were the inevitable absent measurements or ones that had to be wrong and had to be repeated. Plus it was bitterly cold and snowed on and off for most of the time. BUT I was determined! I know that if I want to think radically I have to make a plan and give free reign to my ideas because if I simply start from what is there I will be too guided by what is already on the ground.

So this is the plan that I produced, featuring the pergola/wisteria walkway, two large pine trees that I intend to keep and a couple of birch trees.

The top of the plan faces west and south is on the left hand side.

My first idea was to do something formal and geometric as a sort of counterpoint to the rest of the garden that is informal and ‘organic’. I had an idea of two paths at right angles to one another, the first following the line of the existing path through the pergola, forming quadrants that I would plant in tidy fashion. The trouble is when I drew it it looked all squew-whiff on account of how the actual pergola is not symmetrical to anything else. So the effect would have been ‘off’ .

I then thought about what I wanted from the garden. The key features would be;

• private spaces to sit ( meditate)
• sheltered from the wind that comes up the garden from the west
• many shrubs, with ground cover for minimal upkeep
• white flowers and scent; the white wisteria at the bottom left of the plot has a wonderful scent and I want to add Daphne and winter box
• a feeling of ‘peace’ and ‘seclusion’ so that it is the ‘quietest ‘ part of the garden

I also thought of my visit to the Isabella Plantation in Richmond park and how I had enjoyed the path winding through the shrubs for it’s feeling of peace and seclusion and constant changes of scene.

So, the obvious thing then was to add a winding path rather than a straight one. The path can wind through the garden between the uprights of the pergola and I can break up the form of the pergola with shrubs, both deciduous and evergreen. There would then be small areas, even cubicles in the pergola ‘bays’, where you could add a bench. So here is the shape so far (apologies for the blurry bottom!).

All I need now is a planting plan for the shrubs that I already have and a list of what I want to buy. I am keen on ferns under the fir trees and I already have a Daphne, Philadelphus, Box and Hebe- all with white flowers. My ‘man’ Steve comes next Sunday to clear the area, taking up the old railway sleepers that are there and the scrubby undergrowth. With a blank canvas I can start setting out the path and then after that start planting.

Today I also spent some time cutting back overgrown shrubs in the middle of the garden. As with so much here, the plants are OK but are terribly over-grown so that the shrubs are long and rangy and take over the space and are pretty formless too. My aim, as with the fruit trees is to work through the garden pruning and shaping so that I end up with plants that have form and structure and healthy growth.

 

 

 

Yesterday Steve and Lucas did a fabulous job of getting rid of the ugly dead trees ( where the thuja hedge had died)  and turning them into a wonderful pile of logs.

The space looks so much better already now that we can see the elder, hawthorn and hazels that the county council planted by the busway. It’s interesting how your eye is always drawn to the largest visual elements and as these were the dead trees it was these that I saw. I plan to fill this area with more trees and shrubs to make the boundary more interesting than the straight-line that it currently is. I would like something a bit more undulating and curved so that the garden feels a bit less like a long corridor. This will mean more planting that goes across the garden, if not all the way then at least coming in in curved arcs rather than simply following the boundary.

Steve and Lucas also removed two wild cherry trees that were shading the wisteria pergola. Even in the winter you can tell that there will be so much more light in this area with them gone. Steve has been persuaded to come back a week on Sunday to clear the area under and around the pergola ready for my more formal garden. Better get planning…