Authors: Margery Fish
We Made a Garden (10 page)
Most rock gardens are improved by the judicious use of slow-growing dwarf conifers, and in most borders something solid and substantial helps the landscape when there are no flowers. Against my long high wall I have several evergreens, including a variegated euonymus and a choisya, which make a comforting splash of tender green when all is bare.
Hedges have the same effect, and if a garden has definite bone structure of this kind it will keep its character at all times of the year.
When planting shrubs and trees of this kind it is important to remember what size they will eventually reach. When I see a little new garden literally peppered with shrubs that will in time become massive trees I shudder to think of the impenetrable forest that will result. Only a little while ago I saw
Cupressus macrocarpa
planted only a few feet apart in a tiny garden. They were not there as a hedge but as individual trees.
Cupressus macrocarpa
when allowed to grow without restraint becomes a gigantic forest tree with a girth of several yards in its old age. We usually see these trees used as a hedge and then they seldom live long enough to get really big.
In our endeavours to make the garden more interesting we made every mistake that was possible, and I hate to think of all the hours of work I have put in undoing the result of our labours.
Very early in the game we decided we must develop vistas in the garden to add interest and purpose. In a small garden it is difficult to achieve the unexpected. A big garden gives ample scope with hedges, walls, varying levels and the size of the garden itself. We all know gardens that never achieve character, however much work the owners put into them. We wanted our garden to be ‘come hitherish’, for just as in a house one should catch a glimpse of something exciting that makes you want to explore further, so a garden should lead you on from one point to another. You mustn’t see it all at once, but there must be glimpses that make you wonder what is round the corner.
There were two walls separating us from the orchard, and the higher of these we reduced to a very low level to bring the orchard closer. And then to make the orchard even more part of the garden Walter hatched the idea of making a path right down it to the end. After this was done he said the path must lead to something more than just the end of the orchard, and he suggested a little paved garden with a seat.
So we wheeled down flat stones to pave a circular court, with a low wall round the back and sides. Under instructions I planted a border of tall perennials behind the wall. I used to tease Walter about his ‘shrine’ or ‘grotto’ and did everything I could to make it what he felt was needed.
All this time I was buying cheap daffodils for naturalizing and planting them under the apple trees, so there would be something pleasant to look at in the spring when one sauntered down the long walk and took a little rest on the stone seat at the end of it.
But we never did erect the seat, and the shrine very soon became known as the folly, because we quickly discovered that we had not the labour to keep the long walk through the orchard weeded and rolled, and our pathetic little paved garden looked utterly out of place in an orchard. So I was instructed to dismantle it, and in course of time all those carefully laid stones were trundled back for use in some other enterprise.
A ditch made our boundary between our orchard and the next one, and I reclaimed part of it near the malthouse for a small iris garden. It wasn’t a vast success either, because it was really too shady for the irises to be baked in the summer so they didn’t flower with the enthusiasm they should, but it gave Walter an idea that if we could own all the ditch I could make a water garden. So we bought a strip of the next orchard and acquired a good many more apple trees, the ditch and with it the makings of a wild garden.
This meant a fence as our boundary instead of a ditch, and Walter suggested I should plant a hedge to screen us from the next orchard and tall perennials in front if it. The hedge was very easy, just cuttings of
Lonicera nitida
stuck in at regular intervals, and I divided the clumps of plants from the abandoned shrine to go in front of it.
That again we found was a silly idea. Orchards and flower gardens cannot and should not be combined. It was impossible to keep the flower bed free from orchard weeds and the perennials were soon swamped by nettles, couch grass and docks. So I dug up the long suffering flowers once more and gave the bed back to the orchard, to which it really belonged.
I continued planting daffodils under the apple trees, acquiring cheap lots when I could, and lifting and dividing those already there. They were a great joy, because daffodils undoubtedly look their best tossing their heads in long grass, but in the end they had to go too. We were faced with the problem of cutting the grass and there again the problem of labour defeated us. We had an Allen scythe, but no one to use it. We begged local farmers to help by cutting it with their big mowing machines in return for the hay, but the orchard had been used for chickens and was so uneven that the blades of the mowing machines were badly damaged. The sensible thing was to wire the orchard and let it for grazing, and that we did. Cows don’t eat daffodils unless there is nothing else for them, but they trample them in a heartbreaking way, so that half the buds never had a chance to open. There was nothing else for it but to dig them up and plant them in other parts of the garden. Even if we could have solved the cutting problem and let the grass go for hay it wouldn’t have worked. If you take away all the grass you must in fairness give your trees some nourishment in place of it, and the natural way to do this is to offer your hospitality to cows or sheep, who will keep down the grass and leave thank offerings behind.
It was only by chance one day that we discovered that there was a nice stone wall supporting the orchard at the far end. It was completely hidden by a bank. The level of the orchard is several feet above that part of the road, and over many years the earth had sifted down until it had encroached several feet into the road.
The bank all round the orchard was in a deplorable condition, with brambles, docks, nettles and thorns. Nobody had worried about it for many years. With our neat little beech hedge at the top it looked even worse than it was. We both agreed that if we could expose the wall at the end and clean up the bank, level it and plant it with valerian, it would look very nice. The problem, of course, was labour. Walter and the garden boy had other big jobs on hand, and it was considered too much of an undertaking for me.
But in the end I got it done. One of my sisters providentially came for a holiday and helped me clear the weeds from the bank. We had a magnificent time clearing the ground, because there was a lot of bindweed there, as well as the easier weeds. We both agreed that there is no sport in the world that compares with clearing ground of bindweed. It is far more exciting than golf or fishing. Tracing this tenacious creeping Judas of a weed to its source and getting it out without leaving any small broken pieces behind requires skill and patience, and the reward is a barrowload of the obscene twisting white roots and the joy of burning them.
For weeks I wheeled barrowloads of earth along the road, unearthing the wall at one end and improving the bank at the other. In time the finished bank met the clean and self-conscious wall, and I was able to devote myself to the beautifying of both. Hundreds and hundreds of valerian seedlings were planted in the bank and in the wall. For a year or two those in the bank flourished and multiplied, and that bank was a blaze of crimson, white and every shade of pink. But they began to disappear, and now there are hardly any left. We could never fathom the reason why, unless it was that they found the soil that I took from the wall too rich.
We were both very disappointed about this because we admired so much the railway embankments in the district which were ablaze with valerian. The seedlings I planted in the wall never looked back, soon turned themselves into huge plants and raised enormous families I remove thousands of valerian seedlings from the garden every year and for a long time I hopefully put them in the bank, but now I realize it is a waste of time and I throw them away. Odd daffodil bulbs are now planted there, occasional clumps of tall blue scillas and the wild magenta gladiolus,
G. byzantinus.
They, of course, do not give colour all the year as the valerian would have done.
We tried very hard to keep the grass verges round the house nicely shaven, but again we discovered that gardens and farming don’t mix. Cows come down the road twice a day, and can you blame them if they prefer soft grass to the hard road? In damp weather they reduce the verge to a quagmire, and the tractors that park themselves on the other verge make nearly as much havoc. We still run the mower over the grass near the gate and under the wall, but it is not done very regularly as it is really not worth spending much time on it.
On another occasion Walter had an urge to improve the outlook from our dining-room window. There is a rough triangle of grass on the other side of the road, unkempt and full of nettles, and he thought it should be weeded, levelled and kept tidy. We spent quite a long time on it, and there are still a few valerian left from those I was told to plant, but again we realized our folly. That piece of ground belonged to dogs, children, farm vehicles, stray chickens and endless cats, and later to a telephone kiosk and pole. We had no right to interfere; after all we were the interlopers. Anyone who comes to live in a farming community must realize that the work of the land comes before anything else, and I blush when I think of the things we tried to do. The village belongs to the cows and the tractors and you can’t turn it into a London park.
But though we weren’t very successful in our efforts to take our garden into the road I do admire the people who do. There are certain houses I pass on my various journeys that always make me slow down in admiration. The grass is always nicely cut and the edges neatly trimmed, unlike some places which show a dishevelled face to the road, with nettles and shaggy grass, or brambles sprouting from the bottom of their boundary walls.
When we bought the house our boundary, the ditch, was always full of water, and we bought the strip of the next orchard with the idea of making a wild garden, with water running through it. The banks on both sides were to be tamed and planted, leaving the willows just as they had been when the ditch was purely utilitarian. But again we were disappointed, because as soon as we had widened the bottom of the ditch, and had put down flat stones to make pools and waterfalls, the water disappeared. We never discovered why, because both orchards drained into the ditch, and there is never any shortage of rain in this part of the world. We could only think a new and deeper well had been dug somewhere in the neighbourhood, but gone it had, and now the only time there is water in the ditch is after unusually heavy rain.
My friends are more worried about the disappearance of the stream than I am. They seem to think it will miraculously reappear one day and I am often asked if the water has come back. The absence of water makes it easier to work in the ditch, and I spend a lot of time there. The bank facing east is now made into a series of pockets with lumps of hamstone, and here I grow my primroses and rare polyanthus. Half the opposite side is given up to alpine strawberries, and in the other half I have scooped out all the clay and made a peat garden. It is really easier not to have to bother about gum-boots when I want to work here, but I must say that I should like above all things to have a little running stream somewhere in the garden. Water is so companionable, and though I grow my Asiatic primulas quite well under the trees, with plenty of humus in the soil there is no comparison with them and the wonderful effect of those grown beside water.
At the back of the malthouse the original boundary turned sharply at right angles for the water to drain away at the far side of the garden. A willow was growing crookedly over what should have been water, and it seemed an ideal corner for more stone work. We terraced the ground and made shallow steps down to the stream, and on the other side a little paved court and steep steps up to the orchard. Round the corner we scooped out a lot of the clay and made a wide paved walk with hamstone tiles.
Primulas,
Iris Kaempferi
and
Meconopsis Baileyi
were induced to grow against the wall that supported the garden above, and on the orchard side I used large stones in the steep bank, and planted such sun loving things as zauschneria, sternbergia, rock roses and androsace. Walter spent a lot of time constructing a waterfall down the steepest part. He put drainage pipes across the orchard and arranged big stones over which the water was going to tumble to the stream below. Everything was there except the water, and the only waterfall we ever had was the rain splashing down.
We always referred to this little bit of the garden as the Lido, but is was not easy to explain why when no cooling waters washed its shores.
In the end I planted Asiatic primulas in what should have been the bed of our river. It seemed a pity to waste a position so admirably suited to their taste, so I dug out the heavy clay and filled the channel with a good mixture of leaf mould, sand and compost and here the Bartleys, the Postfords, the Millars and their foreign relations enjoy life, with their feet in deep damp earth and their heads in the sun.