That Old Feeling
Drought tolerant Gypsophile ‘Rosenschleier’ and Hylotelephium
This has been a tough summer with the stress of drought hanging over the garden. Pleasingly my new ‘dry garden’ planting has shrugged off the heat remarkably well, remaining fresh and sprightly around me whilst, in the middle of it all, I have wilted. Despite being a great lover of resilient, heat loving plants, my emotional state is, and has always been, more aligned with the woodlanders – dragging through the summer, semi dormant, waiting for autumn rain to refresh me, a period of gentle growth through winter and then revelling through early spring. A pulmonaria of a person.
Gardeners often talk about suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder: about their deep need for light and the difficulties of short winter days. I’ll miss gardening long into the evenings, downing tools at 10 or so as the light finally fades, but for me the dark winter is a time of excitement and potential. A time for planning and doing and digging and planting, before the inevitable disappointments that come with summer, and endless slew of palliative care, watering and deadheading, cutting back and propping up. The joy for me is in growth and potential, not in postponing the inevitable, dragging out the garden’s demise. The arrival of September is the golden, pivotal moment in which the world tips back into action.
Late summer helenium and alstroemeria
In the last weeks of August Autumn can feel a long way off as the garden sags beneath the heat, but I always feel the first stirrings of anticipation at this time of year, like the first hint of a cool breeze finally on my face. Having had a strong sense of creative vision through the spring, I find that by May I lose the plot and give up, too tired and lacking confidence in my own plans. All summer I worry – ‘What am I even doing? How can I maintain such a big space? What am I trying to achieve?’. I walk around the garden seeing problems and, no matter how hard I try, it is hard to muster confidence in my ability to fix them.
But last week, right on cue, as I was making dinner for the kids, I felt that first breeze of enthusiasm against the cheek, and ideas for the year ahead began to pop into my head. Wisps of a plan. Plants began to step forward and, when I thought they’d fit the job I paused to write them down. Now that the nights are too dark to garden, I will start to spend my evenings researching plants, trawling through the lists of good nurseries and further researching those that might serve well here. It’s a process I love a little too much and I force myself to save such ‘work’ for dark evenings at the end of the year rather than wasting good summer gardening time longingly chasing the mirage of what could be.
Narrow bed before we moved in
Current planting - lovely but a bit serious
Since moving here the week of Christmas 2022 I have tried to create one big chunk of garden and planting each winter and spring, so three big waves in total (I dug the first bed in our first winter, just after moving in and waddling 9months pregnant). For the first time this year I am expanding and reworking areas which I’ve already planted. The biggest chunk of work is on a longish, narrow but double bed running beside the house which I planted in our first spring here, with baby Iris only weeks old. At the time I removed a lot of sickly box hedge and then tried to largely fill the bed with what I could cobble together for free.
Divided Iris sibirica, Salvia ‘Caradonna’ and Geranium ‘Rozanne’ already in the garden, Alchemilla mollis and nepeta from a friend, two Rosa ‘Desdemona’ and some new perennials and shrubs I bought for the purpose. Since then, the planting has ticked along but without much to excite or raise a smile – altogether too subdued a palette for me. The main job this winter is to expand the border (lifting 100 or so old paving stones) and breathe a bit of humour into the planting.
New beds March this year!
Then the 4 new silvery beds need filling as I conked out of steam and plants dramatically in mid-May this year leaving the back of the beds empty. Some good shrubs are destined for them as well as cardoons and further splits of perennials I’ve been nurturing. The two front banks need some rejigging, useful self- seeders of Corsican hellebore and scabious redistributed and the enormous Achillea ‘Cloth of Gold’ split and shuffled backwards where it’s ugly legs will be covered. My supposedly exuberant orange border needs a full overhaul as it is now over heavy on certain things (mainly Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’) and light on others. There’s a lot to do, and for all these areas the game is to introduce fresh excitement on as little budget as possible. New perennials are grown from seed or ruthlessly divided from overcrowded 2L pots I have pounced on.
New silver beds have thrived but have big gaps that need working on
The August wait has been excruciating. Given the drought this year, I feel I’d like to see plants have a good spell of rain before any rough handling. We’ve just had two blessed days of rain but any real reworking must be a good few rainy weeks away. I couldn’t resist making some practical progress and as well as taking cuttings I’ve done a bit of light division. Several weeks ago, in a moment of fervour, I ripped a gorgeous red Astrantia into 15 pieces ready for a new bed I’m planning. Already their roots are showing in their pots and they will be perfect for planting out by the end of September.
I am itching to get going: to dive in, rip out everything I’ve done so far and rework it. As with every winter, I will work feverishly with a clear, bright vision driving me on. By next June, as with every summer, I will look at what I’ve done and roll my eyes and wonder how I could have been so foolish. This endless spiralling seems to me to be the sweetest part of creating a garden. The constant tantalising vision before you and the impossibility of achieving it. I have no doubt that I will never make a garden I’m really happy with, but give me 20 more winters here, and I hope I’ll be close.
