Have I mentioned my home and garden?
I live smack bang in the centre of my little thriving communal town in a
modest little cottage that is part 16^(th) – 17^(th) century. It has an
original bedroom with great view of garden and hills beyond, a big
bathroom and wc with office one end, a quirky shaped kitchen and hall
and a part modern ground floor extension with additional wooden
conservatory. A newly laid flagstone patio lies beyond. (Laid by my fair
hand).
The place is just magical, starting with an enclosed ancient alleyway
or rope walk that feeds off from the main street. In the
summer, holidaymakers stop and look or take photos of that alleyway
because … well … because the darkness of the alley is juxtaposed by
the glorious, briilliantly colourful image of light and flowers and
distance that reveals itself to the eyes at the end of it.
Put it this way, from the hight street, you can look down my passageway
and see, first a glimpse of light, then focussing, see the explosion of
flowers revealed through an open door, anging baskets suspended from my outhouses and a 4ft high Meadowland Mix of flowers exploding from the rockery on the left then your eye gets just a glimpse of the
Georgian red brick and natural stone enclosed end wall a
further 160 ft away at the far, far bottom of the garden. That is where I built the Zen garden feature.
I get a young hippy fella playing all sorts of 60’s, 70’s and 80’s cover
music cross legged at the end of the passage on the street in the
summer. His music floats down the hallway and into the cottage of a
Saturday market day in summer.
Last year, I made the garden a nesting box, secured it to the ivy coated
derelict wall at the end of my garden, (facing south), about 8ft up and
left the round entrance hole blocked to enable the box to weather in for
a year. Last month, I uncovered the entrance and anticipate I’ll get
some interest from breeding blue or yellow tits this year.
Landscaping the area below the box, an area about 25ft wide by 20 ft
long, I introduced shingle, boulders and an 8ft pew, (bench), making
sure I didn’t disturb the ground where I saw a slow worm last year so I
expect to have it making an appearance also. That part of the garden, my
Zen garden, is now a very calm, contemplation area where I can crack
open a beer with friends and female company of a summer’s evening.
Further up the garden, near my shed, I have introduced a pagoda affair
to provide a natural break in the whole garden. I have sited several
climbers in this area, Honeysuckle and Clematis and also secured trellis
to the side of the shed so that it will spread and eventually produce a
wall of foliage and flowers. Below and behind this area, the normal,
bumpy and unkempt lawn will stay the same but above it, I have created a
new lawn that I have made as flat as a snooker table. Using the finest,
suitable grass seed, this area will eventually have a couple of sun
loungers on it, being situated just perfect to look up the garden, past
my vegetable plots and towards the actual cottage and the eastern side
of the property.
Another new feature I am trying this year are a half dozen hanging
towers. “Flower Tower” (TM). They are like high rise hanging baskets
with a depth of about 18″ each and should explode with colour and
flowers once the bedding plants I got from Lidl take hold. I’m using
Lobelia, (Deep blue flowers), Impatiens, (A pinky red variety), Agertum,
(Tiny mauve petals), Begonia, (Big pink flower petals), some yellow,
orange and gold Tagetes and some amazing, blood red Salvia flowers to
provide some drama.
Old favourites like Meadowland mix and Summer flower mix have already
been sown down one side of the rockery near the house, simply by
scattering them where they are intended to grow – and grow they will –
to a height of 3 – 4ft. A rage of colour and variety that will ensure
that bees and butterflies can call by to collect their pollen.
I am also experimenting with various garden herbs, some peppers,
cucumbers and water melon, something I have not grown before.
Earlier in the Spring, a friend gave me a wooden box with over 200
various packets of seed. There is everything you could amagine
in that box so I’ve created other areas to grow lettuce, carrot, onions,
well. You name it!
I have one neighbour and we share much of the vegetable plot area.
Consequently, to the amazement of visitors and customers, when I beckon
them down the garden excitedly in response to their expressed amazement,
we have to walk past rows of proud, tall potato plants, beans on canes
that look like native American tents, Sweet William blooms also crawling
up poles, canes of peas, legions of onions and the odd exotic fruit or
root vegetable crawling about nearby.
Such gardens are images of the past these days because few folk have
either the space or time to do this sort of thing traditionally. Me?
I’ve a young novice at 54 and anyway, my vast garden. (Well long at
150ft though thin at about 25ft), does the fruit and veg thing, the
social space to play and relax thing AND has other areas, shed, patio,
walled seat, conservatory to ensure anyone is entertained, intrigued or
absorbed no matter who they are. 🙂
You know that sense of peace and stillness and in tune-ness we can feel
when way, way out in the wilds of nature? Well, as I can hear right this
moment, right this second, a pair of nesting blackbirds are trilling and
singing away like crazy and delivering me that same sense of calm and
peacefulness.
Yet I take just a few paces and I’m back in town, watching the hustle
and bustle of a thriving market town happily going about it’s business.
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