Day 100 - Quality at last

So far I've covered the rescue operations on the kitchen garden in the larger of the two gardens I was running. Now, in fact, there was an even larger portion of this site that was not productive, but was for ornamental and leisure purposes. Having said that, compared with what I had been used to in my previous job in one of the great but lesser-known English gardens, this was a pretty low-key affair. There was little of any particular quality or rarity, and the potential of the grounds had remained stubbornly unexploited by its history. The mixed flower and shrub borders were tired and uninspiring and limited in scope for the extent of the available ground. There were some overgrown scruffy borders leading to the back door of the house which were overrun with mint and some of the tougher herbaceous plants such as Astrantias. There was one long border separating the veggies from the lawns, again suffering from a lack of originality or interest, and a dull hedge of roses stopping parked cars from driving onto the grass. All round the perimeter a few trees were planted, which created dense shade, so little or no advantage had been gained by planting climbers on the magnificent walls that enclosed the garden. These walls were host to two features to be proud of. One was a fine fan-trained Apricot tree in a private area round the back, which looked great after I had pruned it into shape, but sadly I do not have a photograph of this, only of the more misshapen one in the public areas which I have already shown you. The other wall feature of note was not to be seen within the garden at all, but was on the outside of the North wall, facing the street, and was a wonderful display of Aubrieta, tenaciously hanging on to the lime mortar pointing -

Considering the almost total lack of moisture or nutrients, these were doing remarkably well -

Otherwise, the borders were fairly limited, and after quite a lot of work to sort out the spacing, control the weeds and mulch heavily to encourage growth, we managed to create a passably domestic look, which was all right, but a long way from the more elaborate professional displays I had grown accustomed to. From above the best of the borders looked like this -

There was still a lot of work to do on the climbers on the walls of the house, and I couldn't wait to get stuck into those -

I tried to inject some colour into the spring garden by the addition of clumps of Tulips -

and -

These interventions, combined with some of the existing plants, such as good groups of Fritillaria imperialis, gave us a broader show in the early part of the season -

but generally the effect was quite bland, and certainly not enough to set my pulse racing -

However, there was one excellent feature, which on my arrival the previous July had looked a complete mess of untended coarse grasses, and that was the bulb meadow. This turned out to be a very fine example, and to my mind was far better than the bulb areas I had left behind in my previous establishment. It had some rare Narcissi dating back,  I think, to the 1920's, and for which we did not have a name -

As can be seen from the next picture, the daffodils were planted together with fritillaries, which made an attractive mixture in May -

However, prior to that we had already enjoyed carpets of crocuses in March -

In addition to all this, we had extensive drifts of Erythroniums, or dog's-tooth violets, which presented their more subtle charms amongst the long grass -

Close-up, for the enthusiasts, they looked like this, with their attractive broad spotty leaves -

Later in the summer, after the bulbs had all died back, we cut down the grass, and the area assumed a quieter appearance. In order to achieve this effect, I had had to prune the trees to lift their crowns to let in more light and allow me to get beneath them with the ride-on mower. It was all worth it -

The perimeter was so shaded by large privacy plantings of mature trees, though, that it was difficult to envisage how to use the walls behind to increase the ornamental interest, so I concentrated on keeping the weeds down in the paths, mowing neatly beneath the trees, and clearing the debris that I had found stacked against the walls on my arrival -

This dump of grass clippings was perfectly compostable if interspersed with coarser herbaceous material and shredded and chipped prunings, and it certainly wasn't acceptable to keep dumping it in unsightly heaps around the outskirts of the garden. Simple tasks like that are as important to the rescue process as the more complex horticultural ones. After a while, people stop noticing how scruffy a place looks, and start accepting this kind of thing as normal. Fresh eyes on the situation make a difference, but it is also possible for each of us to train ourselves to have fresh eyes of our own, so we can prevent this happening in the first place. It is called caring.

As a final gesture, I shall show you the annual border which I sowed in the kitchen garden area, including the Aeonium as a centrepiece which I mentioned before. We now had an annual border in each garden, which was handy, as a number of these plants were useful for drying too. It is only young here, but I am sure you get the gist. Shortly it would be frothing with Sweet Peas, Cornflowers and all manner of bright specimens -

And that is all I have that I wish to show you of this garden. Tomorrow, I shall discuss a plan I submitted to increase the plant and visual amenity interest of the garden, which was accepted in principle but never implemented. Then I will move on to the companion garden a couple of hundred yards up the road.