There I was, 35 years old, full of testosterone, ambition, ideas and more energy than I knew how to use. With my team, I had built a garden within the prescribed time-frame, in under eight months, and had done it to the best of my ability. That was about to be tested. In fact, we had done it so well that maintaining it was a piece of cake. The occasional stroll through the borders, lifting weeds by hand, some lawns to mow and edge, some hedges to cut, and a couple of small orchards and young fruit trees to be trained.
I started to itch. I craved new projects. I looked at the layout of the grounds. Once upon a time the ornamental garden attached to the house, and the terraces, had been linked to the huge walled kitchen garden next to which I lived, by a woodland walk. This led past a strange quartz rockery, over what in my imagination was a dramatic ravine, then past the ruined chapel and cemetery to finish at the road beyond my house.
To me, it was without question that these areas all formed part of a linked garden continuum which traversed the more natural open areas and native woodlands which formed the rest of the estate.
I wasn't drawn by any revolutionary concept, but I merely felt that to treat the steep sides of the burn as a sort of Himalayan valley to provide colour and ornament to this central feature, and to blend it out gently into the surrounding countryside and woodland, would be to complete the garden that the site demanded.
As the pressure initially had been to ensure that the garden restoration was manageable within the time-frame, it had been decided that these areas should be outside the scope of the garden team, and they had been placed under the care of the forester, with a brief for making it safe, and a small amount of pruning of overgrown laurels. Inevitably, this meant that to make a proper garden out of it, as I saw it, would inevitably lead to conflict between the gardening and forestry departments, both of which shared a line manager. Poor man. He probably suffered, but so did we all. I am still in touch with him, and he is a good person, decent, friendly and considerate. But I had trouble with the forester, and to be fair, he had trouble with me. I'm sure he did good work, and he was there a lot longer than me, but I just found the methods and vision of his department infuriating, uninspired and long-winded. To be honest, I had never understood why an estate which was by now only a remnant could justify the employment of a forester, at only under 50 acres, nor could I endorse the working practices I witnessed. I never understood how it could take till midday to prepare and load the tools for the day, before even setting out to work, however concerned you were about safety. It probably looked aggressive when I started to maintain the neglected grass in the new tree plantings nearer the house which were beginning to look unsightly and were spoiling the effect of the areas nearby which we had just built. I couldn't help that at the time. I had standards I wanted to keep up, and I resented watching what I viewed as lower expectations letting down my work.
I don't know if it was as a result of my pressure, but I was eventually allowed to upgrade the path between the main house and my own, using the two lads from the open prison for labour. It led from the main drive, past the rockery:
I never secured permission to favour this with alpines, but instead was required to allow it to green up naturally, and to manage the weeds to leave the rock exposed. I still think that was a rubbish idea. As indeed was the rockery in the first place, being a poorly-constructed plum-pudding of stark white rocks, set haphazardly and totally inappropriately on the bend of a woodland walk. Still, that's Victorian gardens for you, and this was about the only genuine historic feature that remained. All the rest was a pastiche we had created. A very attractive one, it must be said.
The path was dug out and edged with boards, then infilled with wood-chippings which we acquired on the cheap. It snaked attractively in wide curves and across a bridge over the steep drop to the burn below:
That's my little girl on the bridge.
All in all it was starting to show potential, but it still wasn't making the most of the drama of the site, as can be seen from the next picture, where the extent of the neglect is obvious. To fix this would require an artistic eye to pruning and planting, and I was ready for the challenge.
Unfortunately, the pointless energy-sapping inter-departmental wrangling, coupled with the potential expense of the work meant that this wasn't tackled. Pity, because I reckoned, even without a track record at that time, that I could have done something spectacular on pure energy and a pittance. Never mind, other opportunities would come. But look at the potential. Savour this unexploited opportunity:
Now, I'm not a bad man, but one thing I knew for sure, is that gardens are about people, and if you make your most spectacular natural feature inaccessible to your audience, and fail to enhance it, then you are a waster and a foot-shooter of the worst type. What a shame.
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