Moving forward – Take Less Breaks

There is something very exciting about the prospect of spring in the garden, although I admit, it is always tinged with a hint of disappointment, as – after inspection – the sausages and I count our losses.

Wet weather has taken its toll over the last two years as frost has rotted some of my giant agapanthus (again!). I can’t seem to win with these adorable plants, their giant purple heads are bigger than mine when they’re happy. I’ve tried storing them for the winter in a greenhouse, leaving them in the (sheltered) garden and doing nothing but moving them to the most protected spot or wrapping them, all with limited success. Maybe I got the timing wrong: when to cover it and take it back out! All I know is I’ve lost at least one. Last year, I lost three, and the others didn’t flower, which broke my heart.

I babbled, checking the pots for signs of new growth: tiny green shoots appeared, cutting off all the old dead growth hiding beneath them.

Of course, I’m not a gardener, and I’ve never been one. Growing up as I did, with just a balcony on top of an apartment block, I had no history of gardens, but I will never forget the first time I lived in a house with a garden. It sowed a seed in me; it filled me with such wonder and joy that, going forward, I knew I couldn’t live without a garden.

OK, after starting with a lawn, I quickly learned that having a dog, it wasn’t ideal. In my first home, my three German Shepherds and one Jack Russel turned our small yard into a Somme re-enactment in a matter of weeks. Still, being outside where I can sit by myself and watch the world go by is invaluable to me. Although I have two small beds of hardy shrubs and a small tree, my garden is full of potted paniculate hydrangeas, fragrant roses, peonies, agapanthus, and hardy geraniums (cranesbill).

Then there are wall pots and tubs, which I love to fill with color; perennials and annuals grown and purchased locally, which I plant every year. What is valuable to me is my slow growth ginkgo biloba a large potted tree given to me as a parting gift by my neighbour, a kind and serious young man who had become my friend in my last years in London and who worked as a kindergarten caretaker at Kew. It was actually left in my will, so precious to me as my own tree of life and new beginnings, brought here where I knew nothing and no one, my first tentative steps towards a new life alone.

Six Ginkgo trees, charred and peeled, survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and produced new shoots the following spring, a symbol of resilience and survival despite the death and destruction caused by humanity. Who doesn’t appreciate their own Ginkgo, given as a gift?

My garden is unique; not neat and tidy like some people, more messy, some even think it is neglected, even though the plants that grow in the cracks in the paving are carefully cared for and loved. I have an antique coffee grinder filled with violets and lobelia attached to the fence, and a tree mural on the wall of the house with images of hedgehogs, butterflies, magpies and foxes, which I painted during the pandemic.