Garden Making: –
For some people in the UK making a new garden means getting a designer in, or at least thinking radically about what to keep and what to change. This may then be followed by bulldozers and backhoes – or JCBs, as we call them in the UK.
We were never able to afford much land sculpting of that kind. A little was inevitable – just levelling for a pool and a path, and the removal of a dead tree and a large amount of soil by the house. We have large sloping areas which we couldn’t even think of terracing and on the whole we have left the land the shape it was when we came.
Meadows and not so much meadows.
When we came, the two acres which have become the garden were mostly grass. And we were rather cavalier about that, though I’m happy to report that the idea of a ‘meadow’ was fashionable enough for us to keep quite large areas of what transpired to be ancient pasture.
We learnt how to garden an ancient meadow, and the cowslips are very happy with it.
They are followed by this sort of thing…
and this! (I love a bit of backlight…)
Sadly, it has become a big thing here in the UK for people to dig up boring old meadows like these, which are rich in plants adapted to and belonging to the local ecology, and which offer as much or more to the environment in carbon capture as woodland. They then transform them into that which has become known as a ‘meadow’ or ‘annual meadow’ by ploughing or digging and sowing annual flowers. The progenitor of this model is an arable field full of weeds, now reproduced with no arable crop. As below.
I think if we had had had lots of money, we might have done some regrettable damage.
A vanished lane
It has been my interest in our local history which has possibly saved me from miserable mistakes like that and also made me look carefully and keenly at what the garden is telling me of its past.
For example, we have one piece on the edge of our land which didn’t make any sense – it just sort of sticks out into a field. But in time I came to understand a lot about this strange configuration.
First that it is the remnant of an old lane. Part of that lane is now our drive but our garage is now built right across it, so it’s very easy to not realise that it was once a public lane – and that the lane went on into a field. (Then where? I don’t know!)
This is not so boring as it looks. The dark branch running sideways is a beech tree which was originally laid as part of the hedge along the edge of the lane. You can see the field I refer to behind it.
Wordsworth wrote about hedges like these in his poem about this very locality in Lines Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey:
And a vanished home.
The sticky out bit was the end of someone else’s long thin plot. The cottage that was there has vanished completely and the associated land has all been absorbed into the field. There’s someone’s history gone – except that the end of the lane is still there and now at least understood. I think of those people when I look out over that field.
The circled bit is what became the end of the lane, sticking out into the field. On the Tithe Map the field is called ‘Almshouse Field’ and that is another mystery. The lane is marked edged in red here, but these days, between the house and the field, that small building has grown right over what was left of the lane.
We have more remnants of lost homes. In another neighbouring field there is a wonderfully huge mass of snowdrops, signalling where you can still find the overgrown stones which are virtually all that is left of that particular cottage. Alongside is a wreck of an abandoned car. (It’s not easy to imagine just how anyone got it there).
Charles poked around the ruins a little and discovered the base of an iron…..
The Ruin
We also have our own ruin, partially rebuilt (and shaped) by Charles.
and behind it is a mass of vinca minor (periwinkle)
I can’t help imagining someone happily planting the original piece – perhaps a gift or perhaps a treat from the market. Now it has spread far beyond that person’s maddest imaginings:
Yep, all that green is periwinkle.
Don’t imagine though that this becomes a mass of flowers. The flowers are quite scarce, suggesting that the plants spread like this before the surrounding trees put them in quite deep shade.
The same piece of land also has a mass of boulders, which puzzle everyone who sees them.
I have come to the conclusion that they were dragged off the fields above there at the time when the Tithe Map shows most of the land to be arable, not long after the Napoleonic Wars, when people were hungry enough to try such marginal farming. We have also found mules’ shoes, (or donkey’s?) perhaps evidence of how the work was done.
And us…..
Somewhere in the garden are a pair of scissors, badly missed, but we lost them. And a pair of shears, several secateurs, who knows what else? And I often wonder what our legacy plant may be. We’ve planted thousands of plants: what will stay? Charles puts some of our broken things into a place we have come to call the midden. I have no idea what our mark on the land will be, but I suspect it will be faint. I hope someone will discover our traces one distant day. I wonder if this will stay? (It would take some moving..)
So much of our land has history, even a newly built housing estate sits on land that has been there, and probably used by people, for thousands of years. And it is salutary to recognise that we will be part of that history. It is so worthwhile to seek out the traces of the past, though it can be hard to see sometimes. It took a visit from an expert on woodland to point out to us an old path – leading to the snowdrop cottage. It can be worth having someone else’s eye on a place.
‘The past is the book that records the steps to where we are now – and the missteps. It is also fragile as gossamer, likely to be brushed away…Remembering matters. In all of the universe, so far as we know, remembering is uniquely human. We must not take it for granted. We must pay attention.’ Neil Oliver.
I once attended a lecture by a famous garden designer, who talked about how sensitive we all should be to a sense of place. This was followed by pictures of garden making, involving bulldozers. Oddly, I saw this as a contradiction.
BRAVA Anne Wareham !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Began studying historic gardens, 2+ decades, across Europe in the late 80’s. Why? Newly degreed USA horticulturist, college taught me how to be a guy in a truck, mow grass, put in bushes to grow large to then include, in the contract, pruning, mow-mow-mow, zero priority for pollinators, create ridiculous incurves/outcurves, put in irrigation system, create landscapes to be looked at, not to be IN.
First trip, got the British Meadow Memo. Have called it Tara Turf ever since, used it in my Garden Design practice since those days. In my own garden….(Tara Turf triggered husband, he sprayed roundup, waited, then tractored it, installed irrigation, planted fescue, which promptly died before summer’s end. I know, my bad. Should have been first memo from universe, LEAVE !)
Oddly, past few years, from England & Europe, seeing gardens, online, mimicking USA landscapes I had fled from.
Now, your literal validation of those observations.
Your stories, your photos………………thrilling. Top of your game. Mentoring, and more.
Seems so simple. OBVIOUS. Yet, majority, aka non-gardeners sense it is shamanistic. The witch in the woods plying her trade. Lunatic fringe, etc………… Worse, most USA housing subdivisions put it into legal contracts: having monoculture lawns, specific plants approved, how it is to be pruned, mowed…..
A lot to change, to get change.
Looking forward to your website………….
Thank you for putting this out there ANNE….
BTW, meadow, Tara Turf, pasture…..favorite rant topic, life topic, soul topic……pure gift from Providence…..meadows.
Garden & Be Well, Tara
With people like you around maybe I can be hopeful and cheerful?? Need lots of you in the UK though! Xxxx
What a terrific and fascinating post. I am always interested in the history of the land I garden on. In my former garden, where supposedly nary a house stood–at least on record–I found remnants of old handmade bricks, an ornate iron portion of a Victorian vent, a piece of purple slag glass, some part of a horse or mule harness, and tons of colored glass (colored purple by lying in the sun).
In my current garden, like you, I have a peculiar small piece of land that juts out like a thumb. I was certain when the land was surveyed that some mistake had been made because that land couldn’t possibly belong to this house. I was wrong. Turns out, it is the remnant of part of a former alley that our city deeded to the long-ago owners of my old house. Through many discoveries, I’ve also discerned from old fashioned bulbs and brick borders buried under the soil that some previous owner was a gardener. This makes me smile.
When I think of the English, I always think they know “the right way” to garden so when you mentioned the transformation of an existing meadow into an annual meadow, I was surprised. However, I still hold the English up as ideal gardeners who have centuries of garden experience in their blood. Thanks for the post!
I wonder why the city gave that land? It so often seems that one answer leads to another question. And isn’t it good to know there was another gardener there.
Centuries of garden experience, though, can ossify……..
Xxx
I love this!
My two previous homes were new largely stripped of any sense of place in their construction. I tried to restore a bit of it by adding native shrubs back to my garden, plus fruit trees because the areas agricultural significance (at least in the last 170 years or so) cannot really be ignored. The ‘new’ place is actually an older home whose garden is lacking in most anything that readers here would think of as ‘garden’. When we arrived it was largely lawn – lawn which was little grass and mostly weeds – ringed by poorly-maintained fruit trees. In three years, I’ve ditched most of the lawn, retained some native groundcovers & other plants found hidden within that grass, planted 11 fruit trees, removed 3 of the poorly-pruned with more headed for the same woodchipper, and maybe hopefully reminded the land of its history.
Re: your auto’s mystery placement – My husband and I once did a lot more hiking than we currently get around to doing. Once, on a quest to find his grandfather’s old mining claim along a certain creek in the Sierra Nevada, we went in search of a creek that fed into “Cadillac Gulch”. The search started in our 4-wheel-drive pickup. an hour or two later, when that could no longer advance up the narrow, scrub-choked path, we set off on foot. Eventually the path became barely a deer trail, but we arrived at a narrow valley, steep hillsides lined with dense oaks, tiny trickle of water gurgling down the “V”. And there, lying across this barely-a-crick, miles from anything resembling a road or even civilization, was the rusted out namesake of said gulch. We laugh about the incongruity and the mystery even now.
I love that story – that definitely beats our wreck by miles!
I like the idea of reminding the land of its history.
Just had to add that I love the story about the hike and the Cadillac. I admire your effort to restore or add a ‘sense of place’ to your properties. What you do to your current property is as much part of its history as what someone did before you owned it, gardening or otherwise.
Wonderful post!
Thank you!
Enjoyed your story very much.
Re your almshouse field mystery, that sounds akin to what once would have been called a potter’s field in the states. E.g. an old cemetery for the unknown, unclaimed, and / or poor in earlier times. If so, treading lightly on the land there may have been fortuitous for you in that sense as well.
I love your connection, however faint, to the people gone before. On our land in the Pacific Northwest, we have discovered deep paths made by native Americans, traveling between coast and inland valley, and we found an iron stove leg from the cabin long gone, of the land-grant settlers, who grabbed their 160 acres. I’m often reminded of them all on my walks. Thanks.
Yes – there are those long ago inhabitants, and then also paths and roads do prompt thoughts about the travellers and their journeys.
Anne, the way Veddw has grown and flourished is due in large measure, I believe, to the respect that you and Charles have shown, and continue to show, to the people who came before you. I also live on a property that overflows with history, and making that history visible in the landscape guides everything I do at Glen Villa. The marks from the past can be inspirational, and they certainly suggest that all of us, gardeners or not, consider how actions will mark the future.
Thank you for writing this piece. Clearly it resonates with me, and with many other readers.
You were on my mind, of course! And I love the dedication and respect you give to your land, its history and its development too. You have added a whole extra dimension. Xxxx
Good stuff!
Thank you!
An absence of funds frustrates and from the frustration comes invention. Nobody has ever had all their good ideas at once and we have all mistaken some bad ones for good.
That’s wisdom…….
This is wonderful Anne! I know it and love it.
x
Thank you, Maggie! Xxx
Left alone, the landscape of nature is rarely symmetrical yet always in balance. The ‘inhabitants’ need to be reminded that the garden was created before ‘they’ were placed there. Thank you.