Reflecting on six years in a North London garden

After six very happy years in our north London Victorian terrace, we recently moved away. We decided that, much as we love Harringay, we want to be closer to the forest (though still within London) and so we have moved to Chingford, where the forest is literally on the doorstep. We were sad to leave the old house, which has a lot of Victorian charm (and which we put a lot of effort into rescuing from a state of neglect as a house of multiple occupancy). But most of all we were sad to leave the garden.

I started blogging about our garden in February 2016. The garden was looking quite forlorn – the wonderful fruit trees were all bare and the flower beds still pretty sparse. So I was seeking ways to cheer it up, with primroses and various blubs – and lots of pots. I struggled a little with the squirrels who ate some of the bulbs, but I soon worked out which ones squirrels prefer and which ones they leave alone. The garden wildlife continued to entertain, enrich and challenge us – in March, I wrote about the joy of seeing the birds feeding at the feeders and splashing in the bird bath, and some of the challenges posed by cats and slugs, not to mention the cheeky squirrels who very quickly got used to the bird feeders.

In spring and summer the garden exploded into life, becoming very lush. By May, the trees were full of leaves, providing welcome privacy at the back, and I was seeking ways to create a ‘green wall’ around the garden by introducing various climbers and wall shrubs to the fences, including honeysuckle, ivy, jasmine, and various clematis, including clematis armandii, an excellent evergreen clematis that grows fast and flowers in early spring. By contrast, in late autumn, I wrote a piece ‘in praise of fallen leaves,’ reflecting not only on the sadness of seeing our bare fruit trees – which had been feeding us all summer – but also some of the benefits, such as greater visibility. For instance, our lovely (evergreen) fatsia was revealed in all its glory, and we had the chance to really see the birds and the squirrels as they chased each other through the naked trees.

In the years that followed, I wrote less frequently on my blog, for various reasons, one of them being the loss of my mother in February 2017. In May 2017, on the date that would have been Mum's 80th birthday, I reflected on gardening and mental health. I highlighted the things that make gardening such a tonic – including the opportunity it gives for people to nurture plants and wildlife, and for sharing and connecting; the value of being busy and distracted in the garden, or just pottering and getting away from it all; and the absolute focus of watching a bee gathering pollen or a fox sleeping in a patch of sun on the lawn.

There has been some drama, such as the time my husband and I were (practically) evicted from our allotment. I wrote about how we brought downsized allotment gardening to our back garden, using various pots, potato bags and a small rectangle of the flower bed. We had varying degrees of success, but learned an awful lot in the process.  Spring 2018 brought some very strange and variable weather, and I reflected on the challenges of this for gardening, and also made some recommendations for ground-covering plants to help reduce the weeding. 

I also tackled the question of plastic, which was being discussed a lot at the time by Monty Don and others. I highlighted some of its uses in the garden, as well as various ways that we can limit our consumption of single-use plastic and ways to reuse what we already have, and find alternatives to buying more plastic (not always possible). I also found some (still limited) examples of plastic recycling, discovering just how hard it was to recycle black plastic plant pots … 

Never one to shy away from big topics, my final post relating to the old garden touched on the menopause. At the time, there was a lot of BBC coverage of the topic and a lot of awareness raising going on. And I was also experiencing some of the exhausting and emotionally draining symptoms of the peri-menopause. The garden at the time was a place of rest and rejuvenation, and a time for reflection about nature and what is important in life.

When we were selling our house, we were very keen for the buyer to be someone who also cared for nature and would love the garden the way it was. When you sell your house, you can’t guarantee that the buyer won’t dig up the garden and replace it with concrete and astroturf. Luckily for us, our buyer told us that the garden had been a key selling point. My husband had initially been anxious about whether she would feed the birds. (When he left his last property, he had left his bird feeders with the owners and they had taken on feeding of the birds, even though they hadn’t previously done so.) This time there was no need to worry: ‘of course’ she feeds the birds.

The new owner is also excited that foxes visit the garden, and so she won’t be blocking up the various holes they have made in the fences, which have allowed several regular foxes to make our garden their territory, visiting numerous times a day. And she is hoping to introduce a bog garden to attract frogs and toads – something we hadn’t yet got round to. She was very interested to see all the climbers we have introduced along the garden fences, and it’s good to know that she will be encouraging my dream of having a ‘green wall’ all around the garden. It already encourages a huge range of insects and birds, and eventually some birds could decide to nest there.

So we are content that we have left the old garden in good hands. And now we are looking forward to a whole host of new challenges in our new garden! About which I will continue to blog …

Pause for thought

Someone once said that gardeners find it difficult to just sit in their gardens and contemplate their surroundings because they can’t help spotting something that needs to be done, and they have to go and fix it. Until recently, I was probably a bit like that, frequently jumping up to pull up a weed or deadhead a flower or move a pot to catch the sun better.

However, a couple of years ago I started to notice that I was having to sit down and rest much more while gardening. It wasn’t entirely a bad thing. I started to spend more time sitting on the bench at the bottom of the garden just listening to the birds, breathing deeply and searching the air for the drifting scents of lilac, acacia, cyclamen or skimmia, or the fig tree after rain.

It has taken a long time to pin down the source of my fatigue and low mood. I initially thought it was related to anxiety and grief when my mother got sick and passed away. Doctors also suggested it might be related to a physical condition I’ve been grappling with myself. But it gradually started to dawn on me that my mysterious feelings of tiredness and ‘not being myself’ could actually be related to the menopause.

Full marks to the BBC for its recent coverage of the menopause. It has clarified a lot for me, and while I haven’t got a formal diagnosis yet, I’m certain that I am at least peri-menopausal. I feel empowered and freed by that self-diagnosis.

So how does this relate to gardening? First of all, I’m afraid to say, I’ve been working in the garden a lot less than I used to. This is partly related to the fact that we are planning to move house, so there is no point in introducing new things into the garden or starting off new projects. But it’s also partly related to the fact that I don’t have much imagination or desire to do new projects, a condition I have attributed to the menopause, as it’s not like me at all!

On the other hand, I’m fortunate that a lot of earlier projects are now coming to fruition, and so my contemplative sessions seated on the garden bench are full of wonder and fascination (and yes, a bit of pride, too), while also being a time for rejuvenation.

Most of all, the garden is a restful place to be. When I’m feeling tired or my mood is low, or I have a mental block (something that isn’t solely attributable to the menopause!), I can go out with a cup of tea, realign my thoughts and replenish low energy. Just being among plants and trees and looking at greenery is known to be rejuvenating, as recent interest in the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku (or ‘forest bathing’) has reminded us. Sitting and watching the birds, as they feed from the feeders or hop around the climbing plants and woodpiles looking for insects, is also an immensely distracting and restful activity, while birdsong lifts the spirits like nothing else.

Introducing the climbing plants that the birds love so much has itself been a successful project. It’s difficult to predict the success of a plant when you introduce it, and climbers may take a couple of years to establish themselves, while often looking quite leggy at the start as they strive to reach out as far as they can. But after a couple of years, our fences are covered with a mass of foliage, with evergreen clematis, honeysuckle, jasmine and large- and small-leaved ivy. Other projects include the rockery and the ‘stumpery’, both of which started off with a scattering of plants with large spaces between them, but have now filled out quite a lot and look well established and a little wild – exactly the look I was going for. They are also quite low maintenance, as the ground-covering plants suppress the weeds – perfect if you’re not feeling so energetic!

Experts advise women going through the menopause to exercise as much as they can. I walk a lot, and I do go to the gym and try to run as much as possible, but motivation remains a challenge on my low days. At those times, the garden still calls out for attention here and there, drawing me in to activities that offer gentle exercise at a minimum, and frequently end up being quite energetic – such as hoeing, weeding, transplanting and moving pots around!

I like to think of the ‘menopause’ simply as a ‘pause’ – it’s a time for reflection and a time to think about the next phase of life. (The Japanese apparently call it the ‘second Spring’.) As the BBC coverage reminded us, women going through the menopause are often at the top of their game. They are suddenly faced with a fundamental change in their sense of well-being, while – in many cases – not only caring for growing families and elderly parents, but also managing demanding and responsible jobs.

We all experience the menopause differently, but we can all see it as a time to pause and reflect. The nature around us (in the garden or elsewhere) can help us to do that and to think deeply about what is most important in our lives and where we see the next phase taking us.

The question of plastic

David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II series triggered long-overdue mass public concern about plastic. Gardening bloggers and retailers haven’t wasted any time in stepping up to fill the discussion space. The most urgent problem, of course, is plastic waste and our culture of disposability. The gardening industry is as guilty as any other of promoting single-use plastic for convenience.

Yet plastic is an extremely useful material – it has transformed gardening, making it accessible to many more people. Before plastic plant pots were widely available (pre-1970s), most garden plants were grown from seed, sold in heavy clay pots, or had to be ordered from a catalogue and delivered ‘bare root’. The advent of the light-weight plastic pot – not to mention lighter plastic tools and plastic bags for delivering compost – has revolutionised the gardening industry, allowing regular home gardeners much greater access to plants and gardening support. Considering the all-round physical and mental health benefits of gardening, this can’t be an entirely bad thing, especially if it means more people are creating urban and suburban wildlife habitats.

Moreover, some plastic things – water butts, composting bins, watering cans – are very durable and can be used for many years. I have a plastic trug, which I have had for years and use all the time. Large plastic tubs for plants can be more robust and tend to be cheaper than terracotta (though not as elegant). They are also lighter, so you can move them around the garden more easily, which can be useful if you are short on space and grow vegetables in tubs.

But plastic waste and the sheer extent of plastic usage in gardening is still a major cause for concern. It’s great to see that Monty Don is now tackling the question of plastic in the current series of Gardeners’ World. Monty admits he doesn’t have an answer for everything (that’s why we love him!), but he has been trying different approaches over the weeks, and he is always conscious of when he is using plastic and what alternatives might be available.

Monty rightly points out that you shouldn’t immediately throw out all of your plastic stuff. The best thing to do is re-use your plastic as much as you can until it is no longer useable. Some plastic things, such as seedling pockets, are very flimsy but even these can be used a few times.

The regular plastic plant pots can also be re-used and I find that it’s always useful to have plastic pots of various sizes available for seedlings or cuttings. However, over the years, gardeners amass huge numbers of plastic pots and we can’t re-use all of them. Of course, other people may just be starting out, so there may be a local allotment or school that will welcome your old pots, or you could try selling them at car boot sales or putting them on Freecycle.

But can we recycle them? Plant pots are usually made from high density polyethylene (HDPE) or polypropelene; these are harder to recycle than polyethylene terephthelate (PET), which is what plastic drink bottles are made from. So local councils are unlikely to accept plastic plant pots for recycling. But with an estimated 500 million pots in circulation every year, more should be done to tackle the recycling challenge.

A few weeks ago, we asked our local garden centre, the excellent Sunshine, whether they would accept plastic pots if we returned them. They told us that we could return the ones that came from them originally and their suppliers would accept them back. However, not all of the pots have the name of the garden centre on their label. As yet, there are very few plant pot recycling schemes, and some have even been discontinued, due to a lack of capacity among recycling companies. However, Which reports that Dobbies and Notcutts collect pots at all of their stores.

Non-plastic pots are increasingly being promoted in garden centres. They are currently more expensive and less widely available than plastic pots, but if we support their use, this can hopefully change over time. The Hairy Pot Plant Company sells plants in (hairy) biodegradable pots made in Sri Lanka from coir fibre made out of the waste husks from coconut farms. (These generate air miles, yes, but also fair trade opportunities.) Various other types of biodegradable pot are available online, but you should avoid ones that contain peat or those wrapped in plastic packaging for delivery!

You can always make your own planters – from newspaper or the inner tubes of toilet rolls. I have been trialling cardboard toilet roll tubes with cucumber and courgette seeds, with pretty good results so far. I planted the seedlings in potting compost in the cardboard rolls and placed them in a – yes – durable plastic tray for the water to drain into. The seedlings are coming through quite happily in a cold frame. The great thing is that you can then simply plant the seedlings, cardboard and all, in a larger pot or vegetable bed and the cardboard will just decompose. (The plastic tray can be used again next year and the year after that …)

Other things to think about are labels: wooden or bamboo ones are available instead of plastic ones (but you need to make sure they are sustainably sourced). The Green Seed Company makes some out of recycled coffee cups! Gardening ties (e.g. for tying up your climbers) are also frequently made of plastic, so you could use regular string or biodegradable jute twine if you don’t need a permanent tie. You can also re-use bits of string that you find everywhere. I have been collecting odd pieces of string that I come across and keeping them in a tin. It’s amazing how they add up to a lot of garden ties after a while.

You can also re-purpose your household plastic products. You could use plastic food lids as saucers under plant pots, or make plastic drink bottles into mini greenhouses! (Just don’t forget to clean and recycle them when you’re done.)

There are also things to think about when you are shopping for plants. Take your own bag rather than taking a plastic bag from the shop, or use a box instead. Our local Homebase, which sells increasing amounts of gardening products, now has piles of cardboard boxes at the cash tills (a practice that I remember from supermarkets in my childhood).

So there’s a lot to think about! In short, to follow the old re-cycling mantra:

·        Reduce: Think before you buy plastic goods. Is there an alternative organic pot available for the plant you have chosen? Should you buy the tool with the plastic or the wooden handle? What are those gloves made of? Can you make your own pots to grow your seeds in?

·        Re-use: Get the most from the plastic pots that you already have, or give them to schools or allotments to use. Can you use those plastic compost bags for household waste? Or for growing potatoes in?

·        Recycle: Take plastic pots back to your garden centre and try to get them to accept them, or travel that extra distance to Nottcutts (or Dobbies if you live in the North).

·        Remember: Environmentally-friendly gardening is not just about being aware of plastic – it’s about sustainably sourced wood, peat-free compost, bee-friendly plants, careful water use, and much more, even ethical paving …

·        And … Relax! Enjoy your garden, knowing that you are not only creating a calming, beautiful space, but you are doing it without harming the world around you in the process.

Spring was good while it lasted

It was a long winter and it was wonderful to finally experience some warm sunshine recently. Spring is an exciting time in the garden, as it explodes with colour, scent and sound. But March and April have seen dramatic and rapid changes in the weather, lurching from icy blasts to record high temperatures, then to wind and driving rain. One can only imagine the impact this has had on the garden.

The two late cold snaps arrested some growth in our garden, and some normally winter-hardy plants even succumbed to the frost. Our jasmine polyanthum appeared to suffer badly; and we lost all of the lovely trailing geraniums in our window boxes – plants that had survived two previous winters and performed beautifully every year.

The cold snaps were followed by wet weather and the garden became quite waterlogged, making it difficult to do much at all. Most plants appear to be resilient to heavy rain, though. The primroses got very soggy and brown, but deadheading revealed a lot of new growth. The ferns also benefited from a bit of a tidy up and it was lovely to see the new fronds unfurling.

The brief spell of hot sunshine was very welcome and I found myself outside all the time, doing jobs in the garden, soaking up the sun, and posting photos of flowers on social media ... But even then there were challenges for the garden, as we recorded the hottest April temperatures for 70 years. A BBC weather forecaster warned that spring flowers may not last as long and might be overtaken quickly by the summer growth.

The sunshine coincided with blossom season, and our plum, cherry and pear trees really brightened things up. Some of the most dramatic blossom trees are in our neighbours’ gardens, and we enjoyed the ‘borrowed landscapes’. 

One neighbour’s acacia tree literally hums with bees in spring. This, combined with the chattering of goldfinches, the singing of robins and blackbirds, the cooing of woodpigeons, and the squawking of parakeets, adds up to a wonderful spring cacophony that transports you out of the city (although it's unlikely you'd find that particular combination of sounds outside North London).

But the mini heatwave was quickly replaced by colder temperatures, heavy rains and strong winds. This is similar to a couple of years ago, when we also had a lot of wind and rain shortly after the blossom came out, and we lost the blossom very quickly – we think that may have affected the fruit harvests, too.

Rain or shine, spring has been particularly fragrant, with the heady scent of hyacinths and skimmias (var. ‘Fragrans’ and ‘Fragrant Cloud’), which we have planted close to the seat at the bottom of the garden. Also by the seat is an unusual clematis – ‘Pixie’. It has tiny delicate leaves and dozens of small white flowers with a delicate but lovely fragrance.

Our vegetables are already showing promise, despite the confusing weather. Our early potatoes (planted in bags) have healthy green shoots; the raspberries and blueberries are looking good; while the rhubarb – which performed very poorly last year – is showing numerous sturdy stems. So I'm looking forward to a good few crumbles this year (a warming thought as we huddle inside with the rain beating down outdoors …). Rhubarb disappears completely over winter, so to see it spring up so quickly and strongly in a matter of days is very exciting.

There is a lot to do in the garden in springtime, so it’s frustrating to be faced with cold temperatures and pouring rain. …. There are seeds to sow – cucumbers, courgettes, carrots – which can at least be started indoors. Outside, though, the climbers – clematis, honeysuckle – need tying in regularly as they experience dramatic growth spurts. The lawn looks unruly far too quickly after being mown – but with all the wet weather it’s difficult to find a suitable time to mow it. And of course there is weeding to do – though as the garden matures, it’s nice to see some of the ground cover plants doing their work and reducing mine. (I recommend phlox ‘Purple Beauty’, alyssum ‘Luna’ and oregano.)

So, we will do what we can regardless of the elements. It looks as though it will get warmer and drier in the next few days …In fact, now the BBC are saying it's going to be the hottest early May Bank Holiday on record.

Downsizing from allotment to back garden

Last year we were evicted from our allotment for not being productive enough. Well, we weren’t exactly evicted, but the message from the allotment inspector was clear. As a result we have now ‘downsized’ to our back garden. An exciting challenge!

My husband was on the allotment waiting list for 8 years (since before we met), so it was lucky that he was still living in the same area when his name came up. It was a busy time for us (we were just moving house and we both have busy jobs) but we thought this could be a great opportunity to test out ‘the good life’. The plot was beautiful and we managed to produce potatoes, raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries and some herbs, and we started growing a rhubarb plant.

But just getting to the allotment often enough was difficult, as it wasn’t all that close, and with busy jobs we only really made it once a week. Cucumber and carrot seedlings were attacked by slugs or birds, or just dried out because we couldn’t water them enough. In summer we had some wet and warm weather which meant the weeds shot up suddenly, making the whole place look unkempt and neglected. It was then that the allotment inspector decided to make an unannounced visit, then sent an official letter telling us to be more productive or be out….We decided to make a more-or-less dignified exit, and focus on re-applying our new skills to our own garden. 

The big lesson from our allotment experience was that you need to be able to tend to vegetables daily (especially in dry weather)!   

We had a head start in the back garden with our fruit trees - cherry, pear, plum, fig, damson. The trees make the end of the garden shady in summer, which we love, but is not great for growing veg, and we also like having flower borders. But we set aside one of the flower beds and decided to do the rest in pots. I got a mini greenhouse for nurturing seedlings. We were all set!

Even last year we had our first results. We managed to coax some delicious cucumbers from struggling plants we had brought back from the allotment. They seemed to grow well both in the vegetable bed and in pots. At that point we really started to get a thrill from growing our own food in the back garden!

We brought home some suckers from the raspberry bushes we’d planted on the allotment – they now seem quite strong and produced some fruit even last year. They are growing well in pots, supported with stakes against a side wall. We brought the rhubarb plant back as well, but it’s had a bumpy ride. It was squashed flat one night, perhaps by a fox or a cat sleeping on it; then it started to grow, but then bolted – it grew a big flower then appeared to collapse - probably due to stress. But it has started to grow more strongly now and we look forward to rhubarb crumble next year ...

We’ve planted a gooseberry bush, which is doing well, though hasn’t fruited this year (I didn’t expect it to …). A friend of mine recommended blueberry bushes as the leaves turn a beautiful red in the autumn, which makes them doubly attractive. We got two (for pollination), and they appeared to be doing well, but withered in a dry spell, despite watering. I realised the vegetable bed had a slight slope and the soil was easily compacted, so there was a lot of run-off. I dug the bushes out, put them in pots and cut them down to size and now they seem to be recovering. I’m going to put them in larger pots (with peat-free ericaceous compost) and I’ll keep watering and monitoring them. We're also planning to make the vegetable bed into a raised bed to improve the soil quality and ensure an even surface.

We planted (early and main-crop) potatoes in potato-growing bags, which means we don’t have to give up loads of space, and we can change the compost in the bags each year when we re-use them (so no need for ‘rotation’). I also experimented with various other containers, including large round pots and old compost bags, as well as a mix of pure compost, soil and compost, and plain soil. So far, the best yields have come from large round pots with soil/compost mix, but we’ll continue to experiment!

We grew peas against the fence, protecting the young plants with netting, which also gave them something to hang on to as they grew taller. We had a good harvest around May/June though none of the peas saw a pan or even a plate, as we ate them all straight from the pod (the healthiest way to do it apparently)!

July/August is definitely courgette season. We never knew how much we loved courgettes, but having to eat them on a regular basis means exploring new delicious recipes. The courgette plants in the flower bed are huge. The ones in pots are growing less vigorously (possibly because the pots aren’t quite big enough), but they’re still producing those large beautiful yellow flowers, with some nice courgettes emerging behind. We have had less success this year with cucumbers, but each year is different and you have to chalk it up to experience.

We grew some carrots in the veg bed and in pots. The ones in the veg bed got crowded out by the courgettes, but the ones in the pots have grown quite well – they are nice and sweet, but I think we’ll go for deeper pots next year for larger carrots. We’ve grown rocket and mixed salad in pots. But garlic has been less successful – I’m not sure why. We planted cloves in pots and in the flower bed, including among the roses (to ward off rose-pests). They initially produced some leaves, but not one garlic plant has matured. I think some didn’t get enough sun, but I’m not sure about the others.

To make use of vertical space, we hung baskets up on the fence for strawberry plants. These have produced quite well, but required a lot of watering in dry weather because of too much drainage in the pots. We also tried out a hanging strawberry bag, but that was less successful; again it was quite dry even when watered regularly. We have an older strawberry plant in a big pot which has been the most productive of our strawberry plants (and is in fact the mother of all the others).

This year we have had extremely good harvests of cherries (June), plums and damsons (July/August). We are exploring all kinds of ways of cooking and preserving plums at the moment, as well as giving them to neighbours. Our pear tree is also now weighed down with pears which are just getting to peak ripeness. I tried a poached pear recipe for the first time the other day, and I think we might be on to something!

We failed spectacularly on mint this year. Like garlic and rhubarb, this is a plant that is supposed to be ‘very easy’ to grow. I think the problem was lack of water and not enough sunlight, so we have started again and will keep a more watchful eye out. At least with pots of mint (or anything else) you can move them around until they seem happy.

All things considered, we’ve had a much more productive time in the food garden this year, without any inspectors. With the garden outside the back door, as we both work from home, we’ve been able to protect enough of our harvest to enjoy plenty of it.

Gardening and mental health

As this week is Mental Health Awareness week, it is worth reflecting again on the mental health benefits of gardening.  These are now well-recognised.  Gardening stops us moping around the house and the physical activity generates positive hormones such as serotonin.  Apparently there are even natural antidepressants in the soil that can help to reduce stress.  But there are other reasons why gardening can help us feel better about ourselves.  Here I focus on three that have particular resonance for me.

The need to nurture

As Sarah Rayner writes, ‘we are all nurturers’ and gardens give us the opportunity to nurture and care for nature – be it plants or wildlife.  Not having children, I sometimes think this is one of the most therapeutic aspects of gardening for me.  And there is immense satisfaction to be had from the responsiveness of the natural environment.  By creating the right environment (or putting the ‘right plant in the right place’) we are rewarded with colours and scents, season by season.  There is nothing more satisfying than planting a seed and nurturing it to become a seedling, then a plant, then a cluster of cucumbers, eaten when freshly cut.   

We put out bird feeders and water, we plant bee-friendly plants, and we are rewarded by a constant stream of wildlife activity.  Foxes visit too, and we enjoy their visits as much as anything – although our neighbours tend to treat them as pests and block holes in their fences.  That’s a shame as, with a wider vision, we could contribute to a much greater transformative effect, creating wildlife corridors and localised ecosystems through interconnected gardens.  Following the highly depressing political events of 2016, I feel it is more important than ever that people take care of their own local environment and where better to start than your own back yard (or balcony or windowsill ...)?

Sharing and connecting

The organisation Thrive promotes the value of gardening for people with mental health problems, emphasising among other things the ability of gardening to connect people and improve communication, reducing feelings of isolation.  The social benefits of group gardening have also been recognized for those in mental health units and prisons, as it focuses attention away from insularity and more towards collective problem-solving and collaboration.  From my perspective, I have always valued connections with other people through gardening.   

Today would have been the 80^th birthday of my mother who sadly passed away this February.  I used to love talking to her about gardening and regularly used to get advice on what to plant, what to do with bulbs and when to bring plants indoors for the winter.  She had an encyclopaedic knowledge of plant names.  I miss her terribly, but I am also glad that one of the gifts she has left me with is my interest in gardening, and my ability now to pass on some of that knowledge (including to Dad who is also a keen gardener, but occasionally misses her guidance …).   

Recently a dear friend of mine came to visit and we spent a good while going round the garden looking at plants and talking about how they were doing.  I found that simple sharing experience immensely enjoyable.  And one of the simplest and best pleasures my husband and I share is to sit in the garden watching chaffinches and blue tits (and parakeets …) on the bird feeder, or the squirrels chasing each other through the branches of the fig tree, or listening to the swifts of a summer evening with a glass of wine.

Getting away from it all

At the same time gardening is also a great way to get away from everything.  I find the best antidote to work is to potter around the garden, doing a bit of weeding or watering, tying in new shoots of climbing plants, planting vegetables and watching them grow, planning how to fill spaces and thinking about whether to move something or leave it where it is.  Gardening is a wonderfully distracting activity that - without effort - generates great concentration and focus, and therefore dispels any other worries and concerns.  It provides its own structure, demanding care and thought throughout the seasons, and as such it is challenging and reassuring at the same time.   

The gentle imperative of gardening even unlocks writer’s block.  In fact one of the great advantages of working from home is that I can and do just ‘pop out’ when I’m struggling to find inspiration by my computer.  A garden allows for those moments when we can be still and we can see, smell and listen to what is around us – to truly live in the moment.  Often the mere sight of a flower newly opened out, or a bee busily gathering pollen, or a fox peacefully sleeping in a patch of sun on the lawn, can be enough to lift the spirits.  It’s about living in the present and understanding that you are not the centre of the universe; that the paper you are writing is not going to change the world (unfortunately); but that you can be at one with nature and that is really all that matters. 

In praise of fallen leaves

A couple of years ago I was travelling in northern Norway at the peak of autumn. I vividly remember the long coach journey from Alta to Kautokeino through valleys with trees bathed in stunning colour. Yet within a few days of arriving in Kautokeino, all the leaves had dropped from the trees. I commented to a local woman what a shame it was that all the leaves had fallen. She looked at me and said, ‘I really love this time of year, though, because you get to see the contours of the landscape.’ And it was true. Without the leaves to obscure the view, you could see the true shape of the mountains and valleys as they stretched into the distance.

I was reflecting on that special moment the other day as I pondered our newly denuded garden. Having lots of amazing fruit trees is great in spring and summer, but it also means the fall of Autumn leaves is very dramatic and rather sad, not to mention hard work to clear up. It also suddenly reveals the houses that overlook our garden at the back, whose windows are obscured by the huge leaves of our towering fig tree during the summer months.

And yet … now we can see the beautiful fatsia in all its glory. At this time of year the fatsia is just coming into its own, and now, rather than being one of several leafy shrubs at the bottom of the garden, it is really standing out sharply, with its shiny dark leaves and extraordinary cream-coloured exotic flowers.

I can see that this notion of ‘seasonal reveal’ could work well in garden design. I could plant colourful winter flowers (such as cyclamen) behind shrubs that are striking and full-leaved in summer but fade to nothing in winter. We have a dwarf lilac in a large pot near the bottom of the garden. Rather than seeing an awkward twiggy thing in its pot, I could look through it instead and marvel at the colour behind it.

It is also much easier to see the garden wildlife when there are fewer leaves. The squirrels have been chasing each other up and down the long boughs of the fig tree and through the spaces between cherry and plum tree branches. It’s a lot of fun to watch.

In general, since taking on this garden after we moved in two years ago, I have been trying to introduce a lot more evergreen planting, including lots of climbers to cover the fences (such as ivy, honeysuckle, clematis, etc.). But focusing only on evergreens sometimes means missing out on a whole range of possible flowers, or a beautiful show of autumn leaves and – now I understand – the opportunity to change the very contours of the garden on a seasonal basis. The garden definitely looks barer now, but it’s also looking bigger and more open.

I could work with that …