Feeling right at home

From the number of people I see gazing into estate agents' windows, who like me are probably not in the market for another house move, I guess I'm not alone in being nosy about other people's homes. But I wonder how many are as interested as I am in the gardens surrounding them. It's rare to find the garden mentioned as a particular selling point and even rarer to see 'beautiful south facing garden' as I did recently. I think that the orientation of the garden is very important, but not long ago I saw a new client for the first time who had no idea which way her back garden faced and on showing her with a compass she was horrified to find it was north east, so surrounded by very tall buildings, only in mid summer would the sun shine directly into her garden.

For a sun worshipper or lavender lover this would have been a disaster but as it turned out that she didn't like to sit in the sun and her favourite plant was Alchemilla mollis then thankfully my visit ended well.

In most gardens, as the sun moves around it, we can move our spots to sit and benches strategically placed in a few locations not only give us different views but also the choice to be in light or shade.

Our plants unfortunately have to put up with what they've been given and all too often planting is a case of looking for a gap and sticking it in which at best only gives the poor plant a fifty/ fifty chance of survival. It's good for plant sales of course when we buy a replacement but it's entirely possible to avoid the guesswork and buy appropriate plants for the conditions we have and embrace the philosophy of putting the right plant in the right place.

The first rule of green fingers is to make an honest appraisal of our garden and consider which plant's tastes we might best accommodate, like lavender, thyme and sage from dry and sunny Provence, rhododenrons and camellias from the misty forests of Asia, grasses from the open prairies of America or should it be bluebells, wood anemones and wild garlic from under the opening canopy of a British woodland.

Although impulse buying plants is very tempting, for just a bit of consideration they really will repay our thoughtfulness and just as we do, they settle best, grow well and thrive where they feel most at home.

Therapy

I am writing this after one of those vanishingly rare Sundays when having enough time to spare to spend the best part of the day in the garden has coincided with the most glorious warm spring sunshine and it has been blissful.

It strikes me that if we all spent more time out in our gardens immersed in the rhythms of the seasons and the way that nature responds to it, watching and enjoying the plant and animal life that shares our gardens with us, then the world would be a much happier place. I've always thought that being close to nature is great therapy, good for body and soul and whatever ails them and it turns out that much research has been done on the subject and guess what, I was right all along and there are now specialist organisations set up to help us in our search for wellness.

Ecotherapy focusses on our connection with the natural environment and how through learning to care for it we can in turn learn to care for and nurture ourselves.

Thrive is a charity which helps people with physical disability or mental ill health through horticulture and gardening and Project Wild Thing aims to educate adults about the essential developmental needs of children though their relationship with nature.

These are just a few of the groups working to get us outside and back where we belong doing wonderful worthwhile work but how sad that there is a need for them when just outside our own back door there it is, the natural world which many of us have forgotten, or never learned, that we need to belong to.

Now in mid spring is the very best time to appreciate it, every day sees changes, plants are growing almost as we watch, new unfurling leaves are fresh and vivid green, the spring flowers are bursting open and all the animal life that depends on them is busy making the most of the increased light and warming temperature to feed up, find a mate and rear their young.

Now in the garden is the most positive and life affirming place we can possibly be. Why would anybody want to be anywhere else?