This is about our small garden in London
The house
wall stands at one end and a 1.5 metre wall surrounds the rest. So it is a
little walled garden. It runs east-west, offering its four walls to exploit.
Over some
25 years I have chosen or have been given plants for it. And a few gift ones I
might well have chosen had I known how well they fitted in.
The garden
is all paved with flagstones, except for an east-west strip of soil running
along the south-facing wall.
Much of one
end of the garden is taken up by a lovely cedar, octagonal, 5-side-glazed
summerhouse, which we call our shed. This is a den/haven in which we can sit
for much of the year – except in the cold of winter.
Spanning
almost a quarter of the garden from side wall to side wall, is a reinforcing
rod and galvanised wire arched arbour. Over it grow Triomphe d’Alsace and Seyval
Blanc grapes to give shade to a wooden bench beneath in hot weather, leaves
for stuffing, and grapes for wine or juice in late summer.
Hanging
from its arches, above a marble garden table, is an odd arrangement of bird
feeders. One of niger seeds to feed goldfinches, another is furnished with peanuts
for blue and great tits, two hold sunflower seeds, also for tits, and the last
for unwanted kitchen fat and fat balls (home made) during wintertime.
There is
another, much smaller (bamboo) arbour, the top of which springs from
vine-training wires above a wall and protrudes over the garden, forming a
narrow, shady tunnel beneath. Up and over this arbour grow runner beans and
tomatoes alternately each year. Bees and bumblebees love the orange-coloured
bean flowers, helping to provide bounteous crops which are grown from our own
seed, saved each year.
On the
north-facing wall was a morello cherry tree, which, over several years, succumbed to silverleaf fungus. It has been
replaced by a damson (Merryweather), trained in espalier fashion – which I hope
it won’t object to.
Along this
north-facing wall in pots, are a conference
pear and an apple – into the latter of which I have “planted” mistletoe with
success. We do not expect much fruit from these trees, being quite happy with
about half a dozen from each every year.
And
standing just away from this wall is a 5’ high wood sculpture of lovers that
was carved out of a lump of elm-diseased wood in the late 1970s. Always outside
in the elements, the couple split and rotted away inside. The piece has now
been hollowed out, restored and painted – a little garishly.
Intruding
from the south-facing wall, almost 3/4 of the distance toward the north-facing
wall, is a peninsular of cascading, loose brickwork, on which perch pots of
flowers.
Some pots
are changed over the seasons, and top ones being anchored with string in winter
to prevent them from being blown over.
The pots contain pyracantha (yellow winter flowers, with
birds loving the berries, spectacular and also loved by bees), phlox (purple
and a surprisingly successful gift to us), pelargoniums
(springing from the holes of a strawberry pot – with a bird bath resting on
top), a Bolivian begonia (scarlet
flowers with its corm saved in sand through the winter), a pieris (a plant that is for ever doing something or other of
interest), two fuchsias (lovely
flowers, loved by bumblebees), a buddleia
(purple flowers for butterflies), a malva (white as white can be with a
limited season), petunias (never
dead-headed, long-lasting and taking the place of impatiens, which seems to have succumbed to disease nationally), lavender (for its leaf colour as much as
its fragrant flowers), a true geranium
(a new gift), a solanum (given to us
and told that its cunquat-like berries are tasteless), sorrel (excellent in green salads, purée and in an omelette, and
the first edible green leaf to appear in springtime), thyme, rosemary, mint, coriander, rocket (which we grow from our own seed each year), asparagus (providing a few spears
annually, which we eat raw), roses (Rev. P-R, and two Typhoon - the best rose ever),
two bay trees (one domed and 35
years old and the other pointing to heaven as we were given it by a dying woman
who had turned to Christianity), a trough of snowdrops and crocus
(disappointing), a honeysuckle and,
rather hidden away, a poor hydrangea and
a hybiscus that doesn’t really fit
in.
Birds are
our garden mobiles and friends – dunnocks, blackbirds, green and gold finches,
blue and great tits, robin, wood pigeons and the passing wren. We treasure
them, and give them food and water. Mice seem to have left the garden now that
their home in the wooden sculpture has had their nest and the rotten wood
extracted and thrown away with the rubbish.
So what of
our mid-summer (August) update for this 2013 year?
During the
winter I reduced our vine extent by almost a third. If it was that, or the year was the cause, the grape bunches are
larger and more prolific than usual. So we expect to make wine.
All plants,
trees and shrubs have done very well. The three buckets of early potatoes (Charlotte
I think of
it as a man’s garden, compact and a bit austere, and somewhat changed since
BBC2 made a Gardener’s World programme here, inasmuch as there are now extra
plants and more colour.
Guests love
this garden sanctuary, seeing it as a cosy and colourful environment in which
to drink wine, talk freely, and eat my home-made cheese pancakes. I offer
Kalamata black olives that are stored in a snap-down jar with olive oil. This
oil darkens with age and adds extra flavour to the olives. As the jar is topped
up when necessary, some olives in it might be quite old and soft, while others
are harder and more astringent.
When guests
eat these olives they are invited to throw the stones at the south-facing wall,
where they fall to the earth below.
There is something about being able to do this that appeals to the child
in most of us.
