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 …
