'Getting into Shape'

How many new year resolutions revolve around coming to terms with the excesses of the festive season and deciding to get ourselves back into some sort of shape? Just as in the human form, most of us see a more shapely garden as a more attractive one and what better time to look over our own with a critical eye than now, when the flattering leaves and flowers are gone, the branches are laid bare and the stark bones of the garden are on full view. We often think that the shape of our garden is dictated by its boundary walls and fences but these can be so easily hidden or disguised with planting that in most gardens we can impose onto it the shape we would prefer. The flat spaces in the garden give us the shapes we see and the easiest and simplest one to manipulate is the lawn. For people who like formality and straight lines, a rectangular or square lawn kept neat and trim with a mowing edge of brick or stone might might appeal to their sense of order and reflected in the architecture of the surrounding buildings will look well groomed and perfectly at home in a village, town or city environment. For those who look out onto the curves of hillsides and the gentle shapes of nature, softer lines might be more appropriate and help place the garden in context. Think of a flower filled meadow with a mown path through, or a lawn sweeping lazily around a group of trees or deep border bending away out of sight to draw the eye to a distant view, a very inviting prospect even if the feet can only be drawn a few yards to a bench at the bottom of the garden. If the shapes we see in the garden flow together, onwards and outwards into the landscape, we can create a beautifully harmonious and restful space. Well that's the theory anyway. In reality getting the garden into shape can take quite a lot of hard work but it's all good exercise and a way that both we and the garden can enter into the new year in great shape!

Surprise surprise!

Most of us like a surprise – well a nice one anyway – and having a garden means that we don't have to wait for a birthday or Christmas for something unexpected to pop up out of the undergrowth. Having a new garden means that I'm finding surprises all over the place, like an enormous day glow orange Kniphofia erupting out of an otherwise unexciting border and flowers out of season like Hellebores in September and Hamamelis sprouting their spidery little blooms in October, way too early. But mostly the treats have been lovely flowers I've not spotted until they unfurl. At the moment delicate little white Cyclamen are peeking out from under hedges, amazingly resilient in dry shade, pretty Schyzostylis have opened up like shining stars and Nerines too, surprisingly shocking pink above strappy dull dark green foliage. It's one thing to be surprised by a new garden but unlikely as it sounds, surprises can be planned for too, even in the most familiar garden. Bulbs planted in the gloom of a grey November are easy to forget about until they emerge in April or May full of the joys of spring even brighter and cheerier than they looked on the packet. Most of us will plant a few daffodils but what about something a bit more exciting, alliums are always striking, tall slender stems with perfect globes made up of masses of tiny, usually purple flowers and camassias are lovely too, spires of clear blue flowers like a cross between a red hot poker and a bluebell. A surprise doesn't have to be visual, wild garlic might be a small and delicate wild woodlander but the smell will knock you sideways and if you dare it's useable in the kitchen in salads and stir frys too. I'll be using all of them as well as turning the heat up for next spring with Tulips, sultry burgundy 'Ronaldo', flaming crimson 'Couleur Cardinal' and to pick out the purple tones in both, the soft lavender and apricot 'Malaika' which is a subtler variation of another favourite 'Princes Irene' an electric blend of deep purple and vivid orange, a real stunner. These aren't colour combinations I'd choose to live with all year but a burst of flamboyance and pizzazz after a dull dreary winter will be a very welcome surprise!

Work in progress.....

Most of us have a favourite thing in our garden which we wouldn't want to be without. For some this might be a neatly mown lawn or a beautiful fine leaved Acer and for me, my garden is not complete without open water. So after sketching at least a dozen permutations of layouts for a man with a digger to follow, my garden has a new baby. A pond has been born – well dug actually. I don't expect it will start to look anything special until the surrounding vegetation gets into growth next spring but I know with complete faith and conviction that it will start to fulfil its main functions straight away. The sky will come down into my garden, its changing colours and moods echoed by reflections in the pond's surface and birds finding water on a dry hillside will stop to drink and bathe. I'll look forward all winter to a summer of damsel and dragon flies and I know from experience that my confidence isn't misplaced. All living things need water and having had the good fortune to be in at the birth of a lot of garden ponds, I've seen how quickly they've been visited or colonised with water fleas upward in size to newts and grass snakes and for one very lucky man, an otter. A pond comes alive when it's planted. Breathing life into it, oxygenating plants hide under the surface quietly doing just that and marginals like Iris at the edges of the water take out excess nutrients and provide vertical stems for emerging insect larvae. With their roots in the darkest depths and their big flat leaves sheltering and shading whatever is beneath, the shining star shaped flowers are the crowning glory of water lilies. From humble beginnings as a waterproofed hole in the ground to a completely self sustaining environment, a pond is a vital habitat and a resource for so many animals and birds. Mine is as big as I can reasonably fit in but just a small one is still very worthwhile so if you don't yet have a favourite part of your garden that you wouldn't want to be without a pond could be perfect.

ps Children love water and poking about in a pond is a wonderful way to learn about nature but be safe, if there are little ones about then perhaps wait until they're a bit older.

Summer's End

Summer's end comes every year with inevitable regularity, a part of the world's natural rhythm, and full as always in equal measure with sadness and exquisite beauty. In the garden the lowering light softly illuminates those gentle colours which the intense midsummer sun bleached out. Powder blue asters contrast with the first of the soft buttery golds and russets of the turning leaves and seed heads are forming at the tips of the swaying stems of ornamental grasses preparing to feed the winter's migrant birds. In the fruit garden – or in my case, in the hedge along the drive – the plums are turning a luscious smoky purple and the apples are reddening up to ripeness. This is the time when summer's shades of green slowly start to turn, one leaf at a time, a hint of yellow here and a flush of orange there until there's no avoiding it, summer is on its way out. We aren't the only ones to notice, swallows and house martins are lining up along the phone wires making ready to leave as the quantity of insect food declines and in the cooler mornings orb web spiders are suddenly noticeable on garden shrubs and hedgerows sitting patiently in the centre of their intricately woven traps. September is a time of change in the garden just as it is in the fields and woods around. Not yet quite autumn but no longer really summer, it's a time when pickings of fruit and vegetables are reaching their peak and it's time too for us to appreciate the garden for what it is, our own part of the glorious natural world, not really under our control at all but subject to the turning earth, changing levels of daylight and falling temperatures. Besides the asters, the other typical flowers of the season sedums are coming into flower too, our native stonecrop is one with yellow flowers but cultivated forms include some with deep purple leaves like Sedum 'Purple Emperor', most are pinkish or white and there are some varieties with names that make me smile like 'Stewed Rhubarb Mountain' and 'Red Cauli'. One of my favourites flowering now is Caryopteris, a scrubby little shrub we forget about until this time of year when it becomes worthy of a place in any sunny garden, it's vivid flowers a perfect reflection of a cloudless blue September sky.

Creating a buzz

As the summer progresses this new garden of mine continues to reveal more of its many secrets. Not all of them are welcome though, the borders are riddled with field bindweed and there's an ancient rusting concrete mixer securely cemented into the roots of an old tree, unfortunately they look equally difficult to remove! But the discoveries when they've come have mostly been exciting ones, two of the best have been a twayblade and a pyramidal orchid peeping out amongst the waving grasses of the unmown lawn and in their number and diversity the bumblebees have been a very welcome surprise. Droning heavily between the flowers, I've watched which ones they prefer to visit and it's the vetch, catmint and the tall purple flax which seem to be favourites. It's no coincidence that the colour and shape of their flowers are similar and being closely spaced along the stems there is less distance for the bees to fly for the amount of pollen gathered and nectar drunk. Such heavy bodies for such small wings to carry, they must need a lot of fuel to stay airborne. The low hum of bumblebees and their slow methodical passage between the flowers is the perfect companion to a warm, sunny summer's afternoon in the garden. We can do nothing to ensure warmth or sunshine but we can encourage the bees with a safe insecticide free environment and reliable supply of food for them during the months when they most need it, from March to September. Keeping flowers blooming through late summer is a trick Buddleja excel at especially if we dead head them regularly. There are people who don't like Buddleja because they're common and will grow anywhere, but I think that's a good thing. Easy to please and prolific flowerers they're brilliant insect plants and although some of them are real whoppers, if you think you just don't have the space to accommodate one, there are now some new compact varieties available. Buddleja 'Buzz Lavander', 'Buzz Magenta' and 'Buzz Ivory' are the colours to choose from and if you can't make up your mind which one you like best there's also 'Multicolor' which has flower spikes of purple, orange and pink all together at the same time. Now that I have a bigger garden and for the sake of the bees I might just go mad, splash out and have one of each!

Patience is a virtue.

If there's a valuable lesson we can all learn from our gardens, it's that the natural world will not be rushed, cajoled or bullied. Things happen in nature's own sweet time when the season and weather are right. No amount of wishing this year made any difference to the sluggish start to spring but then when it did arrive all that momentum and energy seemed to be condensed into a couple of weeks and then suddenly spring had been passed by and summer had arrived. And weren't we ready for it! Not just us either, the birds and bees too, to say nothing of the plants. The vegetable seeds I waited until April to sow sat in the cold frame and sulked for weeks, refusing point blank to germinate, so in desperation I sowed some more at the end of May and in two days they were away, their little shoots uncurling in the unaccustomed sunshine. Now that I have the luxury of a lovely cedar wood greenhouse the young plants have five star accommodation, relishing the warmth while the resident rabbits eye them up, noses pressed to the glass. My new garden and I are just getting to know one another and I have a lot to learn about its character which a mile and a steady climb uphill make so very different from my old one. Already I see evidence of a much more free draining soil in great swathes of red and white valerian, rows of perfect lavender and pinks in the formal borders and in the lawn lots more vetch and far fewer buttercups than my heavy damp clay had me used to. Eager as I am to get stuck in, clear the vegetable patch, dig a pond and move plants around, I know that in the long term for the sake of my back and our budding relationship I should hold back, bide my time and allow my garden to reveal itself to me over the seasons. It won't be easy but after all patience is a virtue so I'll do my best to try and cultivate that too.

New house - new garden

Well I hardly dare put pen to paper - or finger to keyboard - for the risk of putting the mockers on a not yet secure purchase, but after six months in the desperately bleak wilderness of renting we've found a new house and most importantly a new garden. Hooray! The house is actually a bungalow, not chosen I hasten to add because of advancing years and decrepitude, but because it just felt right. It's been renovated with care and attention to detail, it has a lovely view and that rarity, a garden with a soul. Because it's not been tended for a couple of years, there's been no restraining hand preventing self seeding of promiscuous little plants like hellebores and granny's bonnets which have romped around and made themselves at home all over the place. Spreading into patches which have forgotten whether they're meant to be border or lawn these ornamental opportunists and 'weeds' like fox and cubs and self heal have inspired me to hope that there might be a chance of a reasonable little meadow instead of a lawn and the current owners are so obliging that they've agreed to abandon having the man with the mower come in and actual let the grass grow for me to better see what might be there. What nice people! For now there are no photos but if all goes according to plan and the move goes ahead (my fingers and toes are crossed so that should help) within a month or so there will be. Any moment I can steal from working hours will be spent examining the minutiae of every seedling or beginning the clearing of a large and very brambly vegetable patch. Whatever it is I might be doing in my new garden one's thing's for sure - it will be sheer bliss!

April Showers

'Though April showers may come your way, they bring the flowers that bloom in May …..' Well that's the theory anyway, but as our weather patterns respond to changing climatic conditions and flooding or draught becomes an all too regular occurrance for some parts of the country, seasonal certainties seem to be a thing of the past, lessons from history rather than geography. The 'rain cycle' is another one towns and cities have started to rethink. Once it was simple, rain fell onto the earth to be soaked up by forests or slowly infiltrate its way through the ground into streams and rivers to the sea to be returned by evaporation to the clouds, to fall once again as rain and snow. Now so much land is built over with impermeable roads, driveways, and the roofs of so many buildings and channelled from there directly into storm drains, that in heavy rain a deluge rushes directly into and overwhelming our rivers. As flood plains throughout the county were built on pushing the problem further down stream, more of us have felt the devastating effects. If all this sounds depressingly familiar don't despair, there's no need to wait for officialdom to catch on, it is possible for us to use our homes and gardens to alleviate part of the problem ourselves. The roof is a good place to start, a flat or gently sloping one may be perfect for a green roof, planted with Sedums or similar draught tolerant species in a suitable substrate it will absorb some of the rain falling onto it and allow the rest to leave more slowly. By adding a diverter to the downpipe or an ornamental 'rain chain', excess water can be stored in a butt or underground reservoir for use when the draught arrives, or my favourite, piped directly into a pond and from there to a garden soak away, ditch or swale. Gravel, a permeable and relatively inexpensive surfacing also allows the water to drain away more naturally and of course any type of planting in the garden will take up some of the rain falling onto it. Best of all I think are trees, the earth's natural covering. Stabilizing banks and preventing water run off, giving us shade and shelter, providing homes for wildlife and in April giving us some of the most spectacular flowers of the year.

Choices

March is not a good month for a garden designer to be without her own garden. Temporarily renting someone else's home and gardenless, I'm an outsider, excluded from all this month's pent up momentum of plant and animal life. Just waiting for the weather to warm up a bit and the days to lengthen and with a seasonal release of energy they'll all be off as if at the bang of the starter's gun. Green shoots bursting through the soil racing upwards towards the light and birds darting through the trees displaying to potential partners, desperate to start nesting. Bumble bees intent on a early start to the year droning heavily between the crocus flowers and my favourite harbingers of spring, the frogs, croaking all night and then frenziedly at it all day. The natural activity in my garden was as important to me and is now just as much missed as the planned seasonal events like seed sowing and planting first early potatoes. It's not been a long time in years but there's been a huge cultural change from my dad's time as a gardener. He still followed the Victorian empire's attitude to nature of conquer and subdue, kindness itself to people he was a lovely man, but when it came to the garden he ruled with an iron fist. Any seedling daring to pop up out of its designated row would be ruthlessly beheaded by the hoe, insects were all considered to be pests and sprayed rigorously and birds, all thought to be 'after the raspberries', were very unwelcome. Starlings were his pet hate because there were 'just too many of them'. He wasn't alone of course, that was just how things were in his day but in mine we are learning from those terrible mistakes. Starling numbers are now down sixty six percent from my dad's 'too many' of the nineteen eighties and last year's RSPB garden birdwatch recorded them in fewer than half our gardens and I don't think it's hard to work out one reason why. Their staple food is leather jackets and many gardeners still thoughtlessly spray their lawns to kill them. Herbicides, pesticides and insecticides are all very readily available in every garden centre but we don't have to buy them. While the government still dithers over whether or not to ban nicotinoid insecticides we can all make our own personal choices and while I don't have a garden of my own I would love to think that there are other people out there gardening for wildlife. I do hope so.