“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”
Charles Dickens – Great Expectations
It feels like things are really getting going. My Defra contract finishes at the end of the month and I will miss the lovely people I work with. But I can’t wait to spend much more time and attention on the garden.
Laura joins the team
There’s no way the two of us can (or want to) manage this whole garden. Yes, we absolutely do want to look after it. But not so that it becomes a chore. Simon claims to like simple, repetitive tasks where he doesn’t have to think. There will be plenty of that, but there’s a limit when he works full-time. And he’s not a fan of mowing.
As for me, I’m an enthusiastic amateur. I need someone who knows more than I do about managing a garden. What goes best here or there? When’s the right time to prune something? And how hard? I’m always feeble at pruning because I take pity on the plants – they’ve put so much effort into growing! No, it’s ruthless expertise that we need.
I liked the confident way Laura set out her rates. She’s RHS-trained and doesn’t just mow lawns. Often women are made to feel they should apologise for simply asking for reasonable money. It somehow seemed apt on International Women’s Day to take on a gardener who knew her worth.
So, I’m looking forward to Laura sharing her expertise in helping me get on top of the garden and understand what it needs so it can be its best.
As spring is swinging into action there’ll be a lot for us to do!
Goodbye box hedges
The garden is broadly divided into two zones. At the front it’s moderately formal, with a couple of flowerbeds, some statement trees, columnar yews, smartly-pruned shrubs and neat box balls. At the back it’s a lot more relaxed, with trees and shrubs and low growing plants tumbling into one another.
And then there are the box hedges. At least 20 metres of inexplicable hedging – not formal, not casual, not useful, not decorative.
Close to the house on the north side, there’s a paved area, hemmed in by a big fat box hedge around 1 metre tall and 1 metre thick. You might call it a patio but it feels too separate from the house. You have to push through a narrow gap to reach it.
That hedge also monsters an 80-year-old acer which promises to be gorgeous when it comes into leaf. If only the hedge wasn’t jostling its trunk and refusing its branches any freedom.
Just outside the kitchen at the back we have a small courtyard, with the rear garden climbing away above it. Not that you’d know it when you’re in the courtyard, because there is another fat wall of box that’s grown too tall and blocks any views.
I’m sure the previous owner is the sort of person for whom “suburban” would be an insult. But somehow that’s the effect of these hedges. He got so much so right in this garden but those hedges seem a surprising misstep. Maybe they were supposed to be only a foot high and they got away from him? (Like me with pruning, maybe he thought they put so much effort into growing!)
So we had them grubbed up. All 20-odd fat, intrusive metres. And what a relief!
Suddenly the patio feels like a place you can sit around a table with friends (remember how we used to do that before the pandemic?). And in the courtyard you know that you’re in a wonderful garden because now you can see it. It’s all going to need a bit of tidying up, but the potential!
I met the owl
A tawny owl roosts in one of our conifers. You think owls hoot only at night? Think again. We hear this one calling at random times during the day (and, more traditionally, shortly before dawn).
I figured it would be nestled deep in the branches but if I peered long and hard enough I might glimpse it. Imagine my surprise – and the owl’s – when I strolled up and found it on a branch in the open, halfway up the trunk. We stared at each other and I had just enough time to snap a picture on my phone before it flew away. Silently, of course.
Actually there are two owls. The male calls from the conifers (hoo-hooo, hoo-hoo-hooo) and the female answers (kee-wick, kee-wick) from the cedar tree. Try as I might, I’ve never seen her, but I’m hoping she’s making good use of the owl box up in that tree. Owlets with any luck!
Hellebores: are they just fancy buttercups?
They’re also called Christmas rose (it’s March!) or Lenten rose (that’s closer), but apparently hellebores are a type of buttercup that’s got ideas way above its station. There seem to be lots of different varieties but sadly not as many actual plants as I’d like to see. I’m hoping they will self seed as well as they did in the old garden and I’ll also try to propagate some more later in the year.
What’s that smell?
Green shoots everywhere. Under the trees, around the washing line, on the paths. And a suspiciously familiar smell.
At first I thought they were onion flowers – not the nicest things to have around (my mum used to hate them). But it turns out to be wild garlic. I’ve never met this before, but it seems that everyone raves at this time of year. If it’s possible to have a glut of something wild, then Woodridge has it.
Disappointingly, the only suggestions I had for how to use it are to make garlic butter or pesto. I did the latter and its delicious but, er, very garlicky. In a good way, but something of a single note experience.
If any of my friends are wild garlic fans, put it in your diary to get down here next March and you can harvest to your heart’s content.
A nifty gift
My friend Caroline sent us a couple of lovely garden journals. They’ve helped me keep note of when I sowed seeds, following up with how well they did (cosmos, what’s your problem?) and putting in jobs to do later in the year (I won’t remember to divide those hellebores in early autumn without it).
Jobs for the month
I think it’s useful to lists the jobs that Laura’s done on her first couple of visits.
- clear 3 beds/borders in the rear garden, directly above courtyard and beyond
- cut back loads of Hypericum to reveal the two levels in the border
- cut back clumps of sedge grass for now but planning to dig it out
- prune shrub roses
- mow grass and strim on all levels (leaving the area of grass where the daffodils and snowdrops are to let them die back a bit)
- prune hardy fuchsias and Sarcococca on the bank near the house/patio
- cut back dying hebe ready to dig out
And the jobs she says need doing:
- many daffodils are coming up blind so could be removed and there are enough snowdrops to split and place in other areas of the garden
- the holly on the bank will need taking back a bit to give the Sarcococca sufficient light and open up space around a bench
Next month: switching focus from work at my desk to work in my garden.
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