Some close friends of ours have sold their house. Well, yes, of course, they are entitled to, it’s theirs.
But we are finding it very sad.

How many gardeners are brave enough to create something as joyful as this? (It’s Crocosmia Lucifer)
We’ve spent many happy hours in that house with them, so that it will be a sad loss to never be there again. And I love the whole thing – the furniture choices, the decoration, the details, all of it. As we’ve sat there talking, drinking, eating and sometimes having our haircut (our roving hairdresser does us all) I’ve loved looking round at it all.

And then, same place but later in the year. Clipped Parrotia persica.
But, hey – that’s nothing. They are also leaving the garden!
I’ve lost count of how many years we’ve been visiting, but through that whole time Sue has (with assistance from John, of course) been making the garden. We have spent hours together looking, thinking, discussing what could be done. Sometimes our plans, or a version of them happened. Sometimes we would arrive to be shown a surprise – a new planting or even a new garden. One of those, we will now never see mature.

One of the best things, every visit, was seeing the latest arrangement on the steps.
The great joy of helping in a planning and theorising kind of way with a friend is that you don’t have to get your own spade out. They do that, you just admire or critique the result. You help, but most of all you just enjoy.
Whenever I go out into my own garden I may find fresh pleasure as a new plant has flowered or some other good thing has occurred. And equally something may have died. Been eaten. Fallen over. Or got blight.

This is the way out, if you can bear to leave.
I understand it takes five good things to make us feel better after one bad. (Remember that when you criticise your partner’s stacking of the dishwasher – you will need to compensate with one, two, three, four, yes five compensatory compliments to make them feel happy again. Is it worth it?) So I go out into the garden half in anticipation and half in dread. One mouse eaten hellebore flower is going to need many compensatory goodies.

Verbena bonariensis beautifully displayed against a lime washed wall.
However – visit a friend and it all becomes much easier. We do feel for our friend’s disappointments. Of course we do. And we never, of course not, never, feel a little flush of pleasure that our roses are not covered in that unsightly mildew. And if we proposed a plant or a design element and disaster has struck, we feel a little guilty and sad. But it is never quite as bad as this happening to us in our own patch. It just isn’t.

The Picket Fence Garden
Basically your own garden can rarely give you plain, unadulterated pleasure. You’re always tending to be looking for faults, always looking at work needing doing. A friend’s garden does none of this. Usually. You may, I admit, point out a plant in the wrong place and feel a little tension until it goes. And it does need to be a garden well designed, well made and well maintained. This garden is, bluntly, unusual. (See more here)
And now I am to lose this great joy. It’s very hard.
But I do write this also full of appreciation for the pleasure Sue and John’s house and garden have given us.

The garden maker – Susan Wright. And thanks to Charles Hawes for some of the photographs.
I know this garden. Seen online, saved many pics. Small world. Love the garden too. Get more pics…………we’ll continue loving it always. And let it love us.
What I know, leaving a 30 year garden seen in print/tv. That garden will always be in me, will always love me. Of course I loved that garden. How did I not know, that garden LITERALLY LOVED ME. And, LOVES ME still, as I LOVE that GARDEN. The relationship continues.
Decades of transcendence experienced in that garden, followed me. How was I to know?
Go ahead, think I’m crazed. I know what is true, between my garden & my soul. God is good.
Seriously, please get more pics of your friend’s garden to share in upcoming years………… Asking selfishly, knowing it’s an act of grace.
Thank you for this posting, and thank you for future pics !!
Garden & Be Well, XO T
You’ll be happy to know that I have compulsively taken photos every time I visited, so I have many. But Im not sure where they may appear.
Right now, I only know that I will grieve this garden. XXX
Perhaps the new owners will be fun, engaging and continue with the garden. One can hope. Love the photos and that wall box…unique and love it.
That’s my fantasy too, but I haven’t met them!
What a fascinating garden. I hope the new owners appreciate it and care for it. I’d be thrilled to have you as a garden visitor (but a little scared maybe, joking, sort of…you know how I like to edge my lawns).
We can hope you’d give up the lawn edging before I got there…..! Wish I could pop in now and then…
Xxxx
Fabulous!
Having lived and gardened in a number of different houses, I understand how difficult it can be to leave behind a garden so lovingly tended. Have your friends saved any plants to take with to their new place? (That helps.) There should be a rider in the sales contract requiring the new owners to “do no harm” and if anything, enhance the garden!
And I will be the Inspector!
I hear you! And I can do nothing but wallow along with you in your sadness. I have no words of encouragement. After all, you plunged me in despair by bringing up this subject. I have two dear garden friends whose gardens I adored, sat in, walked through, talked about endlessly. They died! One before her time, and the other was elderly but not ready. And the next owners – Icant talk about it! I have another friend who has planted two gardens and left for perfectly acceptable reasons, but I feel the same as you – you expressed it so well!
I have left gardens, one that pains me to this day…. but it is like dogs…..the dogs go to heaven and yet the enthusiasm for the next pup or the next blank piece of ground never leaves us.
Your losses are greater than mine and they must be very painful. You do have my sympathy. I’m not totally sure that the next one compensates but it’s a brave thought…..Xxx
Oh, my, what I’d give to walk through that exuberance of crocosmia! Is it possible that, if there is a next garden, it will be even more delightful?
I think not, because it will be so very much smaller, though there will be one. We’ll see!
Your work seems to be great. Continue the great effort!!
Thank you. Xx
I so identify with your sense of loss. Our community of dirt road neighbors was anchored by the garden and swimming pond of dear friends Richard and Susan. It was our very own local botanical garden/municipal park, the site of countless swims, picnics, garden tours and July 4th fireworks (except during the Bush years when Richard refused to set them off). We took it all for granted, but with Richard passing his 90th birthday, we knew it couldn’t last forever. When Richard died, we planned his memorial service in the garden. It poured that morning and there was talk of moving indoors, but we remained seated in the rain, Susan and 50 of her friends, honoring Richard in the place he so loved.
The gardens were too much for Susan to maintain on her own, and soon they were sold. Not long after, signs appeared all along the road on the garden’s edge: “Private Property, No Trespassing, No Swimming, No Boating, No Fishing.” The new owners had arrived. One day, walking on our dirt road, a new pick-up truck stopped alongside me and the driver introduced herself. She was one of the new owners. “I so wish I had met Richard,” she said. “Oh, you have,” I replied, “he’s everywhere in that garden.”
That is a such a sweet, sad story. Thank you.
I think we can always make another one beautiful garden where ever we will have a home. But I agree, it is sad losing one specially when you put time, effort and love into your garden.
Just about. Window box maybe?
My heart be still…what a gorgeous garden; leaving our gardens is like taking a piece of our hearts.
Could you list the names of any of the flowers inside the picket fences…so beautiful.
Garden on…
I’m sorry – I can’t help with the specific varieties inside the Picket Fences – the aquilegia and allium, you mean?