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Hooked
This year, Jane
Simmonds make the big move and left London for a spot
of garden-sitting in the West Country. We’ve caught
up with her to find out how she’s getting on…
A month or so into
our country garden-sitting, and I’m hooked. The
garden is all in the front, sloping down from the road
to the house. Mostly it’s lawn, with a boundary
of all sorts of trees, including willow, apples, elder
and leylandii, and a stream down one side – which
turns into a muddy torrent from time to time. There’s
a deep border running across the garden below the house
with roses, herbaceous
perennials
and the occasional shrub.
Some might call it overgrown, but it does look appropriately
wild in its valley setting.
London feels a long
way away – there seems so much more of the garden
here, not so much in terms of size, though it is a fair
bit larger, but in abundance. In my London garden, every
plant had its place, much of my gardening time was spent
simply cutting back, and even the area that was an attempt
at a ‘wild’ garden was carefully monitored
so that one plant didn’t swamp the others. Here,
each plant seems to spread out and take the space it
wants to. Crocosmias thrive in this wet, sunny valley,
reaching a huge size. Pulmonarias and nasturtiums, which
I could never grow in London due to snails and blackfly,
sprawl about happily here. The sounds in the garden
are different, too. The stream is the constant, with
wind in the trees and cries of buzzards and crows as
the other regulars, and each passing car or tractor
is audible – an exact reversal of London, where
the traffic was the background hum, and sounds of birds,
plants or weather were an extra.
Much of the gardening
so far has been trying to find out what is planted and
growing here. The apple trees seem to be a remnant of
the plot’s former incarnation as a cottage garden
– most are cider apples, but one russet-coloured,
ovoid apple is apparently a ‘Sheep’s Nose’
– an old, West Country variety. I’ve cut
back herbaceous plants for the winter, and have cleared
some brambles and nettles around some fruit bushes and
pruned them.
Work on the terrace
is going at a steady place, having slowed down after
the initial destructive stage of dismantling what was
there. The muddy quagmire that replaced the old, weedy,
uneven surface between the road and the front door was
not popular with the postman, but we’re slowly
getting back into his good books…
Find out what Jane’s
London garden was like click
here
Why not read more about rejuvenating a garden in Stephen
Anderton's useful and entertaining book click
here
Articles
reprinted with premission from Greenfingers.com
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