Mediterranean
bed first summer
and 2 years later
A Contrary Gardener - digging the first hole in the ground
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Digging the first hole. This can be daunting. In my first garden on the edge of a North facing escarpment in Wiltshire I was faced with a 200ft long X 30ft wide meadow which had one apple tree [cooking], one Sumach tree [with associated suckers] and a beat-up shed. Dilemma, where to start?
Get some graph paper sharpen your pencil and and get sketching? Or buy a 'How to design' your garden CD. That is not how I approached it I'm afraid. For me it is actually exciting [mixed with some trepidation], digging the first hole or cutting back the turf for the first bit of a new flower bed. I am not very good with the graph paper method and lose patience within ten minutes on the CD Rom's. [This is the result of me trying my hand at a design on paper]
So my approach is to try to visualise bits of an overall scheme, dig the first hole, plonk the plant in, fill the hole up again, preferably adding some nice compost [bought or home made] and not forgetting to water the plant to settle the soil back round the roots. Then keep on going as long as energy, the number of plants and finances allow. To be honest to do it all at once would be akin to eating a large box of cream filled chocolate eclairs in one sitting. It spoils the fun of hunting for more plants and visiting gardens and nurseries, discovering new things and being able to change your mind and play some more.
I will admit my incursions last year into the Bath village garden did look a little odd. And from the picture you can see what it looked like in February this year. A more patient person probably would have gone for the plastic/carpet mulch to clear areas. I just started dabbing holes into the grass in April 2001 in an apparently random fashion. The effect, a bit like a small terrier who has been searching for buried bones. But then as more plants have been bought and weather has allowed, the isolated dots have become more joined-up and are now proper flower beds. It is starting to look more coherent. I have already been extending and shaping borders and moving plants in January this year.
Other people who are not good at the paper or CD thing, use hosepipes, string, sand or special spray paint to mark out areas just to see how it looks. Whatever, if it works for you.
How do you know what do do?
There are 'righter' ways of doing things that might get you more professional results. But for example on the allotment why should I want huge quantities of any one thing, apart from being able to boast about my prowess in digging, manuring, watering and mulching. I get enough out of it without doing it all by the book.
I do look things up, I have a number of books ranging from Percy Thrower and Arthur Hellyer bought at jumble sales through Geoff Hamilton to the more 'planty' Beth Chatto or Christopher Lloyd. I buy various gardening magazines. Am I a failure if I forget to prune at a particular time? Or if I prune at the wrong time maybe I will remember next time that was why I didn't get any flowers. And I am afraid that lawns really don't interest me all, the petting and primping bores me, there is too much 'right stuff' in lawn culture. Why do British gardeners count the earthworm as a pest [number 5 in a recent survey] - worm casts in lawns, Oh really !
How do you decide what to plant?
I reckon the best advice is from those gardeners who say garden with what you have, not against. You have to be more stubborn than I am or have the money to garden against the natural conditions that you find in a garden you inherit. Tweaking conditions is fine but wholesale change cannot really be good in the long run. If you want to grow Camellias, heathers, blue poppies and Rhododendrons make sure you are moving to an area of acid soil before ever you bother to actually consider the house you want.
It is important to find out whether the soil is roughly acid or alkaline. Is the soil light and therefore water runs through it quickly or heavy and harder to work? These elements will determine the types of plants that you can grow and the amount of extra work you might have to put in to make it easier for some types of plant to grow. The best idea is to see what thrives in other people's gardens locally and in the wild. I know if I see bracken and heather that I am in an acid area. Where I garden is alkaline and not suitable for plants such as Rhododendrons and Camellias. The aspect is also important to note, that is which way does that particular area of the garden face. West and South are going to be warmer and sunnier generally. You may also get some clues about the prevailing wind which you may have to protect your garden from. The book, First Time Gardening by Geoff Hamilton and Gay Search was an invaluable book when I was starting out, mine is very well thumbed, it is well worth getting hold of a copy.
Where did I start? Well being an inveterate collector of plants I started to get a collection building up on the roof in London as well as the parapet. Some plants had to be lodged with my mother, all in waiting for 'the Garden' proper and the beginning of the dig-a-hole philosophy. Some plants would succeed others would succumb for various reasons.
My first garden turned out to be a long garden on the side of a hillside in North Wiltshire [alkaline]. North facing with wonderful views out over Dauntsey Vale and the M4, and somewhat exposed to the wind. Apart from a patio area which someone had gravelled with the ubiquitous yellowy 'cotswold chippings', the rest was unkempt grassy meadow, home to slow worms who later took up lodging in the compost heap, and chirrupping grasshoppers.
With no real plan in mind, one dry late May day just after I exchanged contracts on the house, my family descended on the Wiltshire grass patch and we started hacking holes out of the grass to get as many of my plant hoard in as possible. Although this wasn't 'scientific' and planned on paper, note was taken of aspect e.g. where the sun fell and the overall condition of the soil as holes were dug. I do try to have a bag of peat free compost nearby to mix in with the 'native' soil just to give a bit of 'oomph' to the initial plantings and water copiously.
The west facing bed was dug into dry and rubbly soil and so it became the 'Mediterranean' bed backed by a Pittosporum hedge. The East facing side was darker and butted up to a wood lap fence. At one end it was damper and the soil heavier with clay about a foot down. Bulbs found it difficult to cope with, despite the gravel in the hole advice, there is no accounting for the burrowing slugs to whom the moisture is more conducive and bulbs a prime target. In this dark corner it took a while to stabilise the planting, but over time it became home to some key shrubs and annual exotics, the final mix included a planting of Eucalyptus niphophila and white 'Iceberg' roses to lighten the effect.
Over the 3 years I had the Wiltshire garden I extended the beds and borders bit by bit down the garden. A yellow themed shade bed [East facing]; a big 'old' rose bed [West facing] and a red bed for late colour [South facing] at the end. No hard landscaping, just digging holes, stripping turf, planting hedging [in this case Beech, and Eleagnus], mulching and weeding.
I do wonder what the garden looks like now, but I think it may be sad to see, better to move on than dwell on other people's neglect or different tastes.
The image here shows the young 'shrubbery' in the Bath village garden planted last year. Taken in winter it looks pretty ugly, but time, patience and some dot joining will transform this rough grassy semi-shaded area. The planting you can see will also eventually buffer the garden from the road on the other side of the wall without the 'blam' effect of a big fence or solid hedge [well that's the theory anyway]. The South westerlies that hit the wall side would also do untold damage to a solid barrier, a twiggy screen will eventually filter and ameliorate the effect.
As I write there are clumps of wild daffodils, Narcissus obvallaris which we planted in the Autumn cheering up the shrubbery, and later on there will be Ox-Eye daises and blue flowered meadow geranium which were already in the lawn and have been re-located to create this wilder area.
[extract from section 4 - 'A Contrary Gardener' - Digging the first hole]
First Time Planting [1991] Geoff Hamilton & Gay Search
Cally Gardens nursery
I have been a mail order customer of this nursery for over ten years and some plants I still have others I don't, that's the way it goes! In March receiving my carefully packed plants sent all the way from Scotland has always been a pleasure and a surprise. When you order from written descriptions in a catalogue with no photographs, part of the fun is seeing the growing reality compared to the imagination.
I visited the nursery located in SW Scotland for the first time last September. On the wet Scottish autumn day I visited, the garden exuded a distinct sense of place. The plants are grown in wide, wild but contained row beds set within a walled garden, so not a typical 'garden' at all. The gardeners washing was hung under the glasshouse roofs which made the plant hunting more interesting! The welcome is friendly. One day I will own a plant of Geum 'Mandarin' when Michael Wickenden and his team have found out a way to get this to propagate better! [I have now found it at the Meadows Nursery, Mells, Somerset.]
In the meantime I enjoy plants in my own garden that I have had for a number of years, including Salvia concolor a huge shrubby salvia [can make over 8 feet of growth in a year from nothing] with velvety deep blue furred flowers in late Autumn, [can be seen at Abbotsbury Gardens in Dorset], and various geraniums, crocosmias and kniphofias.
This year amongst other things I have ordered:
Hedychium densiflorum 'Assam Orange' - Scented pale orange spikes on 3 foot stems, hardy with a winter mulch.
[I have grown Hedychium spicatum for a number of years in pots which stay outside but under shelter and are kept dry all winter - it has paddle shaped exotic leaves which die down with the first frosts, and spidery spikes of white scented flowers in late summer. When you divide the rhizomes in Spring you get the gentle whiff of ginger, which family this plant belongs to, but it is not the ginger for cooking with].
Peltoboykinia tellimiodes - Easy unusual foliage plant for shade and moisture, large palmate leaves, pale green flowers in summer - [yum yum - no idea what it looks like! - I have now looked it up, scalloped rounded leaves and looks to make a big clump. The flowers on longish stems are not particularly significant. Dan Hinkley writes that it does need it's moisture through the summer to keep it looking fresh].
Cimicifuga simplex 'James Compton' Very dark purple foliage and white flowers, named after the expert on this genus, 4 foot 6ins!! [A bugbane! I have one green form already which sends up skyrockets of white spikes in October, growing in fairly deep shade it is one of my last to flower plants].
And I bought as a nude twig in a pot from the nursery last year a shrub, Abeliophyllum distichum 'Rosea', and this spring it put on two shy flowers in early February, a pleasing sight. But alas has now decided to turn up it's dainty toes.
I am not a great fan of Eucalyptus in the garden. I do appreciate the form of a well grown tree for it's movement and 'touch me' qualities. My intention had a I stuck with the planting in Wiltshire would have been to keep them very restrained and cut hard back every year.
I have a fond memory of Christmas in Barcelona where great bunches of red flowered Eucalyptus were being sold in the local markets [ possibly E. macrocarpa, the red flowered one's being too tender I think for the British climate]. And from my window in Bath I can see 3 Eucalyptus in 3 different back gardens. There is one particular tree that I appreciate for the shimmering shoals of silver leaves that dance against the grey-purple skies of autumn and spring. In the winter the white puffs of flowers are also a bonus. Niphophila is called the 'Snow Gum' as it is said to be one of the hardier varieties for this country. In the Bath Botanic garden at the moment it's smooth peeling bark is showing a patched variety of colour that is also very tactile. The main advantage of Eucalyptus is that they are fast growing and can regenerate from a severe hacking back.
Not a rose I would normally give 'garden room' to as it is not scented [which I am fairly strict about]. In the Wiltshire planting however I wanted the coolness of the white against the Eucalyptus, and the thinner upright HT type growth that Iceberg has compared to older type roses suited the style. The flower form is also simple and not over fussy or too dense - just cool.
These evergreen shrubs from New Zealand were particularly popular about 10 years ago. The Tenuifolium types have glossy small evergreen leaves with a slight wave to them. Their growth is neat and rounded. An added bonus are the small odd red, scented flowers. Pittosporum tenuifolium can be tenderish depending on where they are grown [-10C]. You can get green, white/green variegated, gold/green or the slower growing and more tender red-purple leaved varieties.
The primadonna is the evergreen Pittosporum tobira from Japan, Korea & China, which has long glossy slightly laurel-like leaves with swags of white heavily scented flowers in early summer.
Again these evergreen shrubs were more popular some years ago than it appears now. To my mind the quiet charm of Eleagnus x ebbingei with it's hard green leaves with silver reverse and scented inconspicuous flowers overrides the flashier variegated Eleagnus pungens 'Maculata' which is more often seen.
[All work on this site appears in draft. Revisions and additions are continually being made to the main areas of the book]
@Kari's garden 2002