I am trying something different today, a post with an accompanying podcast for those who prefer to listen while they are on the go, although personally I would recommend sitting comfortably with your feet up for ten minutes and closing your eyes while listening.
Enjoy.
If you have been following me on Instagram for a while you will already know my garden means so much more to me than a green lawn with pretty, colourful flowers or somewhere to put the barbecue.
It’s my sanctuary. A place to lose myself in time, a retreat, my absolute favourite place to be. The only clocks to be found in my garden are dandelion clocks, when I am outside my phone stays inside out of hearing distance as I don’t like being disturbed. Hours and minutes go by uncounted, time is not an entity that I am aware of when I am in the company of the bees and the beady eyed robin who follows me around, picking up any worms hiding under leaves or newly turned earth.
Many professional gardeners probably wouldn’t think much of my rambling cottage garden, I can imagine the raised eyebrows at the crooked, leaning arch, straining under the weight of my unpruned Danse de Feu rose. The masses of ox eye daisies left to self-seed where ever they choose, in fact all the self seeders that are left to their own devices, the cheerful blue forget-me-nots that are springing out of the gravel path at the moment, the ever-multiplying patches of lemon balm and the strappy leaves of sisyrinchiums dotted at random with no thought at all to the principals of design.
The trained garden designer in me from long ago rarely bubbles to the surface these days, the need to think of function over form or whether we are north facing, soil type and hidden frost pockets disappeared long ago. The billowing borders and beds do their own thing for the best part of the year, shrubs are cut back when they get too unruly. Roses, of which I have many, are fed in spring and summer and deadheaded only when I happen to be walking slowly by.
Rush is not a word the garden knows. Neither is perfection. Rather like my animal shadow, Freddie, the few words it does understand include leave, sit and stay.
Leave is what I do to many flowers others would call weeds. The huge swathe of nettles that grows over the once productive and tidy vegetable patch would no doubt horrify some. They grow as tall as me by mid summer with thick hairy stems and hand sized leaves that leave itchy white blotches if touched by accident. If you walk up the garden in late summer to where the nettles tower up to meet the plum and apple tree branches, the air will be sparkling with flittering red admiral butterflies, it’s quite a magical sight, one that transports me to another place, not of this world.
That’s a feeling that often takes over, sometimes when I not expecting it. It can be when I’m looking at something as simple as a spider’s web on a frosty morning or the veins on a decaying leaf. A bee with back legs so full of pollen it can hardly fly, the sight of a wren darting in and out of the hedge, the smell of the honeysuckle on a summer’s evening. Sitting with my eyes shut, just listening to the sounds of the garden.
Dotted around the garden are various tables and chairs, all old and in various states of disrepair, purchased from our local bootsale or garage sales from around the nearby villages. Some match, some, don’t, some are painted, some aren’t, some are sat in more often than others but the place I sit when I am on my own, which is quite often, is on a rickety blue wooden bench with iron ends, placed by the side of the wildlife pond.
It’s not a big fancy pond with a water feature or any fish, it’s about 3x2 meters, dug by self as a project after I lost my mum three years ago, a task to keep me occupied and stop my mind from going somewhere I didn’t want it to go.
My garden is a place to heal, it lifts my mind above the noise of the everyday, acting like a cooling salve on the scratches and the stings that life brings every now and then. It helps calm my mind to keep my old enemy anxiety at bay. When it’s too wet to go outside and I am feeling anxious I will paint or sketch which has the same soothing effect, bringing me back into balance.
Sitting by the pond always starts with the netting of any leaves from the surface that have blown in, then nothing but staring into the depths looking for bugs and signs of aquatic life. The plants have started to settle in and establish themselves now. Last year the first waterlily flowers bloomed, there were snails, dragonflies and craneflies, funny little water beetles darting up and down catch some air. If I sit still long enough and very still, I will be lucky to see a little bank vole who has make his home nearby and blackbirds visit to drink and bathe in the cool water.
Although I have seen numerous frogs and toads over the years in the garden none of them seem interested in the pond as yet, I was really hoping to see some frog spawn this year but despite checking every day, there has been no sign and I shall have to wait for next year. But today, on a sunny Suffolk afternoon, after a few hours of moving pots around, mowing the lawn and pulling out handfuls of smothering ground elder, I sat by the pond with a cup of tea to have a moment of calm when a movement in the water caught my eye. It was a newt. There, then gone. A newt, a little creature had made my pond its home and I can’t tell you how happy that made me. I was so happy I phoned Michael at work “We’ve got newts”I shouted down the phone, knowing he wouldn’t quite understand my joy at seeing this little amphibian but that he would be happy that I was happy.
Staying in the garden is easy. If I’ve nothing else planned, a whole day spent fiddling about, moving benches around, putting up a bit of trellis or repairing a fence is a good day for me. The bugs like to stay too, there are no pesticides or herbicides used here to harm them. They are left to do nature’s work and their presence in turn attracts the birds and all the other insect loving creatures, including the bats that swoop so quietly and quickly over the garden at dusk. Slugs, the nemesis of many gardeners don’t bother my hostas as they are picked off by the toads and the hedgehogs.
My garden is my little world, a third of an acre rectangle on the border of Norfolk and Suffolk, counties in a region called East Anglia if you are not familiar with England. It wouldn’t win any prizes, not just because of the invasive ground elder that I battle with every year, but the shed needs replacing as the wood has started to rot in places. Next to the shed are untidy piles of old pots mingled in with the nettles and a couple of disintegrating potting tables. The fruit trees, two apples, a plum and a peach seem to feed the wasps and birds more than us but that’s OK, we’re not greedy and I am happy to share with those who live here too.
The once white picket fence has has lost any sign of paint now, the gate doesn’t fit quite right anymore but it’s not there to keep anybody in or anybody out. The wormery by the house, although convenient for my kitchen vegetable scraps doesn’t look very attractive at all but who really cares, I don’t. A thick dead branch of an old cornus sticks out like a sore thumb from the bed outside the kitchen window but the birds like to use it as a perch so I leave it, it’s well worth it for the smiles they bring with them every single morning. My metal wheelbarrow is twenty years old now, the barrow part is rusted through at the bottom and not attached to the frame anymore but it does it’s job and actually I quite like that it drains of water when we’ve had a downpour.
I’ve stopped worrying if the squirrels dig up the bulbs. There’s a self-seeded silver birch sapling growing in an awkward place, the beech hedge has grown too tall for me to trim, I don’t know if the dahlias will come up this year as I don’t lift them at the end of the season and it has been so wet over winter and late spring, the wet being a bigger killer than the cold in dahlia land, but I shall have to wait and see. Nature gives, nature takes, the circle of life goes on right on my own door step and the less I interfere the better.
My garden does a very good job of looking after me and I pay it back by doing nothing much at all it would seem, but if my garden could talk I am sure it would say it’s a happy garden, content with its lot as it knows it is very, very loved.
Thank you as always for taking a moment of your time to read or listen to my stories, your presence here is valued and deeply appreciated. If I see I’ve received a comment that always makes me jump with joy so please press the button below if you have any gardening thoughts you would like to share.
A Garden Tale