None of which means that I didn't remain cautious at this time. Look at yesterday's photographs. I marked out the borders, but rather than lifting the turf all at once, I cut an outline of turf a couple of inches wide, just enough so I could see it from the roof of the mansion and check if everything was symmetrical. I was leaving nothing to chance. If I had got it wrong, I would be able to slip the turf back in the slots and make adjustments. As it turned out, I had got it right first time. Now was the time to commit. To remove all the turf from the beds and incorporate copious quantities of compost into the soil. It was in fact good, rich arable soil, characterised by large cobblestones which were to be found in the process of digging. The addition of compost was to make a potent mix. In the second season after planting, the delphiniums grew to over ten feet high, and could be seen above the wall of the garden from the terrace below. For me that was living proof of the value of preparation. The garden would have grown fine with no additives, I am sure, but if I am going to adopt old wisdoms, then I want to see them proven. Never trust anything you are told, until you have tested it yourself. I began learning that on this job, by the shovel-load. This picture seems to show all the processes at once, which is not as I remember it - turf removal, digging, manuring. The turf was, of course, re-incorporated into the bottom of the trenches when digging the beds. All that lovely fibre. Good guys in this pic, me second from left.
Anyway, by the time we had reached this stage, progress began to speed up. The technical stuff was done, the shapes had been measured and marked. It was just a question of plugging away at the hard labour of it, finishing off by the raking and levelling of each bed. That's something you have to get right, particularly when much of the digging has been done by an inexperienced team, and could be quite uneven. I did the raking myself. The other thing that was going on here was that I was trying to train the lads to do the work without causing damage or making a mess, hence the polythene sheeting. It may seem like a small point, and far too many people don't bother with it, but if you tip soil over your grass, then you introduce weed seeds into your lawn and starve the grass of light. You turn your green backdrop into sludge, and if you run wheelbarrows over it repeatedly you kill the sward by compacting the roots and give yourself one of the most tedious repair jobs in the business. The answer is simple. Take care, don't make a mess, protect your ground, work off planks where possible, and above all, THINK. Remember that word. It is behind everything I will be saying in the course of this tale.
After a while the beds were dug and we constructed a central gravel walkway linking the perimeter path across the middle, where a structure for climbing plants was planned. We dug out the lavender beds that would form the base of this central frame. Then we began planting. You can have no idea the feelings of excitement, pride and joy this all brought about in the young man I was, embarking on his first real creative post in the horticultural world. All right, the design wasn't mine, but everything else was, and that was a hell of a good start, and a massive kick up the confidence ladder.
Looking good, turf much improved after fertilising, no mess anywhere and roses in place. Path across centre under construction with board-edging in place and hardcore infill begun. A little further down the line the firm that made the custom climbing frame for the central rose feature installed it, causing surprisingly little damage to the work beneath, which we had rashly started in advance of the structure arriving.
The small round beds were an unusual yet simple feature of five standard Rosa mundi in a carpet of catmint, and the larger petal-shaped beds contained monocultures of Victorian Hybrid Perpetual Rose varieties such as 'Baroness Rothschild' and 'Reine des Violettes'. These were early repeat-flowering types that were of the period and could be relied on to give a reasonable show over the summer season. The outer beds next to the walls were mixed plantings of herbaceous plants and once-flowering shrub roses, with climbing roses paired with varieties of Clematis trained against the walls on wires. Two of the shrub roses I came to love in particular were the rugosa hybrid, 'Fimbriata' and the China rose hybrid, 'Mutabilis'.
These were the days when no one was yet worried about the destruction of peatland habitats, and as you can see from the photo below, the final touch we put on the beds was to mulch heavily with peat. The young lady entrusted with the job was the only woman on the job creation team, and I eventually took her on as my full-time assistant. She is still there, over thirty years later.
As for the peat issue, there will be more to say about that later. For the moment, I was only learning about the perils of such extravagance. And I was no worse than anybody else.
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