Garden Regroup

In little more than two weeks’ time it will be four years since His Lordship Malarkey and I moved from the middle of a town in the middle of Kent to the wide open spaces of the Shropshire countryside and Damson Cottage. Four years! Can you believe? I can’t. 

The garden, when we arrived, was mostly trees and grass. There was a small fruit cage in a corner, with three compost bins by its side. There was a shed. Five water butts. A dilapidated hen house. Five newly planted fruit trees, looking a bit whippy, and a couple of small, shallow and, to my mind, pointless ‘raised’ beds. 

And now? Well, the shed has a new window, so has morphed into a potting shed. The whippy fruit trees are now between 8 and 20 feet tall. One of the ‘raised’ beds has been planted up with lavender. The other had vanished beneath the greenhouse....oh yes! The greenhouse! As I write, Andy is just executing the finishing touches - the automatic vent openers, the gutter and down pipes and the staging. After waiting ten days for the missing glass to be delivered (an irritation, but these days I find myself relatively relaxed about things taking their time to arrive) he has been beavering away today and completed the build! It looks amazing!! I shall post some photos tomorrow.

Where was I? Oh yes - the water butts are still where they ever were, the hen house is now redundant as the lady hens are resident in the Eglu. The fruit cage has grown to three times it original original size. We’ve started to subdivide the garden into ‘rooms’ by installing a hornbeam hedge which is now almost 6 feet tall in places. We’ve made a larger raised bed, and I have evicted many shrubs in my mission to create a rose bed. 

And the compost bins? Well, today I decided to empty them. It was like discovering gold - such good compost! This decision is because, having spent so much time at home recentry, we have decided to have a Garden Regroup. Our plans, you see, have outgrown the garden that we started with 4 years ago. And things require shifting. Starting with the compost bins. Which have to be emptied first. 

Now, a Garden Regroup requires consultation with these two books - my gardening bibles, if you will. They are...

and, of course...

...because Monty is the font of all knowledge and I adore him. 

These books are great to dip into from time to time because they provide a refresher course in getting things right, and inspiration, and enthusiasm, and a reminder of all the things you’ve forgotten and also why you want a fabulous garden in the first place! 

So, with the help of these books, the garden at Damson Cottage will change thus:

1) the compost bins will move across the garden to behind the potting shed to sit with the water butts and the incinerator. 

2) the fruit cage will double in size to encompass the current compost bin area and the gap between its current outside edge and the new greenhouse.

3) the round scruffy shrub bed halfway up the garden will be dug up and turned into a round patio seating area and provide a transition zone between the ‘socialising’ garden and the ‘working’ garden. We think we might install a fence and tall gate to make the garden ‘rooms’ more defined.

4) a round garden seat will be placed around the trunk of the plum tree. Because what was going to be the new veg garden (within the perimeter of the hornbeam hedge) will now be a mini orchard with places to sit and relax. Its current raised bed will grow flowers for cutting for the house. Large pots will be introduced, also for flowers.

5) The lawn space at the top of the garden will be taken over by 8 raised beds with slabbed pathways in between. This will accommodate the four crop group rotation practice, and our wheelbarrow in times of heavy rain because it is a wheelbarrow that doesn’t take much encouragement to get itself bogged down.

6) the site of the old greenhouse (which fell over in the wind during our second winter) will be given over to a large cold frame.

7) a pergola will be installed between our patio doors and the laundry building to provide support for the wisteria which, quite frankly, is growing WILD. I envisage being able to sit out beneath a trailing wisteria ‘room‘ within two years! So romantic...sigh...

8) a frame will be constructed up and over the front porch in an attempt to tame the climbing rose ‘Starlight Express’ before the postman refuses to deliver because he can’t find the front door without fear of being scratched to smithereens. 

I can see it all now! Of course, it will take a while to realise, but having a vision can go along way to encourage one along the route to making a dream a reality.