Day 65 - Big picture?

We are now coming back to the motto that pervaded my entire approach to garden maintenance. The whole-border or whole-garden philosophy. It involves viewing every aspect of the garden as part of a greater entity. Now this would seem odd to one of my former bosses. He was the only one who didn't give me a performance-related pay rise the year he was in charge. It would be an understatement to suggest that our contrary approaches made us poor bedfellows. He was a forward-planning and paperwork type, who was always on at me to give him work plans and schedules. He had an absolute need to feel in control of what I was up to. This signified a lack of confidence on his part, as, if he had only looked at the results we were getting, he would have realised that I was not a skiver, and that I could be trusted. Bearing in mind the gross understaffing that afflicted all gardens, he really needed to spare me all unnecessary office-time, instead of loading it on me in bucket-loads. Especially as I was also by now Manager-in-Charge of my property, a new job title which created enough waste paper of its own.

Anyway, he used to drone on about me getting fixated by the detail, and not looking at the big picture. Two things there - firstly, he was the one getting fixated by the detail of my work, wanting it all broken down on paper because he didn't understand it, while I just got on with it. And secondly, as I pointed out to him, garnering limited sympathy, his big picture was comprised of my details. His big picture was nothing without the carefully constructed attention to all the fine points which were my responsibility.

One of those fine points was paradoxically characterised by my whole-garden approach. This was absolutely the opposite of how the boss was imagining it. I had a big picture in mind, which I created by the application of highly detailed interference. I wasn't just a detail man. Let's face it, they had put me in place to do everything. I was well aware of the scope of my role. I'm just not sure the boss was.

That's all just background, but I was really pissed off that for that one year I didn't get financial recognition for the intensity of my labour. I had a family to look after, four kids and a wife, and we were going under because gardeners' pay is so low. I was pulling my tripes out for no reward and getting stick for being too good at my job into the bargain. Give me a break. Well the boss didn't last too long before moving on. All's well that ends. Well....

The hedges round the orchard. I think that's what I intended to talk about, but then I fancied a rant. It's my blog. I can do what I like.

The point about the area is that, as I have mentioned before, it was laid out in four quadrants, the box hedges providing the divisions between and delineating the paths. The entire layout depends on being taken as a single unit. In the beginning I had to deal with damaged hedges, gaps where odd plants had been lost, weak growth in the shady areas, strong growth in the sun, rough grass and cow parsley growing up through the box, starved soil.

One of the first tasks to address was simply to weed beneath the plants. This involved cutting new edges to the grass to define where the meadow finished and the hedge began. Because the grass had been allowed to grow long right up to the hedges, it tended to flop over onto them, so that there was no proper separation between the very formal and the informal elements which were supposed to provide such a contrast. I introduced a major change. Not only did we cut new edges and weed under the box plants, we also mulched the bare soil we had created in so doing. Then I made the decision that we would mow a single strip every week with our 21" rotary mower all around the inside of the hedges in the orchard, to keep the long grass from encroaching on the hedges. This made an immediate difference by distancing the formal from the froth, and gave the whole area a deliberate look, where before it looked like no one really knew what to do with it. The earliest picture I have predates my time by two years, and shows the hedges in September just after their only cut of the year. A keen eye will notice a gap further down on the left where a plant has died, and also some slight undulations in the top. It doesn't look too bad by most people's standards, but it definitely wasn't good enough for me. One of the problems was that although the hedges were being cut carefully, they were not being cut with reference to each other, and the tops were being shaped by holding the hedgecutter at a constant height to the body while walking along slowly. This has the effect of making the hedge follow the lie of the land, and does not provide a flat top. I was desperate to rectify this.

Of course, to all but the most pedantic eye the paths looked level and everybody except me was more than satisfied with the results. And in the main the yew cones that closed off each walkway were well cut. They formed even pairs, standing ramrod straight and vertical to a crisp central point. However, some of them were tall and slim, some were squat and plump. There were eight of them which worked well as four separate pairs, but not as a whole. Whole-garden approach, remember? In the following picture, right at the back centre one of the hedges leading out of the picture can just be seen to be several inches taller than the others where it grew in the shade and reached for the light. Instead of viewing it as part of a complex of hedges, it had been maintained according to the way it was tending to grow, not the way it was intended to grow. It was thin because the overhanging cherries shaded it too much, hung too low over it. So - the cherries needed to be pruned. Hedge culture is about so much more than cutting hedges.

So, in these illustrations I have not yet brought you to the point where I started my interferences, or improvements as I like to think of them. That's for tomorrow. We're going to learn some tricks. And maybe in the process find out why some jobs are best done by the professionals, who have time, skills and patience to do them properly.