New Gardens?
Not many people in Britain get to make a new garden, as the place is ram jam full of old gardens. This is not reflected in those surprisingly common and totally absurd articles which suggest that people might, for example, make a ‘drought resistant’ garden. Or after a rather wetter summer a ‘rain garden’. Recently people would supposedly have been digging everything up and chucking it away in order to make a ‘pollinator friendly’ garden or a ‘sustainable’ garden.
Given that most people treat plants like pets and are reluctant to kill any apart from those rather arbitrarily defined as ‘weeds’, it is truly hard to imagine how any of these clean slate, ethically sound gardens are supposed to emerge. But reality doesn’t figure much in our strange horticultural world.

1989 – we had two acres sort of looking like this….(and no decent camera)
However, I have been in the fortunate position of making a garden on ungardened land, over a long period of time. It may appear from posh magazines that every garden in Britain is designed by a professional and executed in a couple of years, but we are still making ours, amateur fashion, after 33 years. Resources and the nature of growing things have made this a slow process.
And in the last few years I have been making three new gardens within the two acre garden at Veddw. From scratch, and I’m intrigued by the process.
Gardens are not instant, Chelsea notwithstanding.
It takes ages. Most perennial plants take about three to six years to reach maturity and a decent size, during which growth time they will have to compete with happy weeds – happy to find the spaces in between the plants. I have coped with this largely by the use of imported bark or wood chippings as mulch or our own grass cuttings used the same way. But there are many challenges, even in the recognise a weed department. Growing new plants, plants which I may never have seen before, especially as just two new leaves, can be problematic. As in distinguishing them from new weeds, which somehow seem to be able to find their way into the garden, despite the mulch.
Sometimes with the mulch. We used some mulch one year which had been underneath a tree, which had kindly dropped all its seeds into the mulch….
But it can start well if mulch is obtainable. And the newly planted and sometimes identifiable plants (identifiable because I have recently been able to plant them out of pots looking reasonably recognisable) – become my favourite visit. Just as long as the currently resident rabbit and permanently resident slugs and snails can be foiled. This is the current such garden with its mulch of grass cutting from the nearby meadow.

The beginning……

And Charles looking suitably anxious……?
Time moves on..
After the first year it gets more problematic. I’ll still have no idea what the plants look like unless I’m very familiar with the breed. And who knows if they will have survived the winter? (and rabbits) This is the time of year when I may go and anxiously examine what goes on. And I may equally avoid going anywhere near a newish garden because this may now be a garden which will look too bleak and empty, and I fear not much will return at all.
This can go on for some time. I am currently avoiding visiting the Cornfield Garden (explaining the name would take too long, but I will sometime..). I think that the first two or three winters feel the most anxiety provoking and that if you (by will power, I guess, or by miserably paying good money for replacement plants) can get a garden through those it may become a real garden.

Sometimes there will be a sudden rash of growth – a sure indicator of a new discovery amongst weeds.
Last year in late summer it managed, after two years, to look like this!!!

(Was that pink flower the weed, though??)

It was strange, and you may not believe me, how good that pale pink managed to look with a vibrant yellow.
But after its third winter as a new garden it is looking like this, and it’s MAY. It has been a cold and very dry spring, followed by a cold and then terribly wet spring, both including rabbits. So will this be an empty garden this year? Have all those expensive lovely plants vanished??? Been eaten?? Run away??

I don’t think those tiny little green things are actually real desirable plants.

Will this garden continue to deserve its label?
After a good long time it’s not much better.
Then there’s the New Garden, which is in its fifth or sixth year now. That name must be obvious? But still some well-known and by now well-loved plants have yet, gulp, to reappear. The gardens is pretty full now, and can mulch itself every year simply by our cutting the foliage down in autumn, so the need to find mulch for it is mercifully gone. But the anxieties have not.

Here lies total confusion…….

But at one point last year it was looking like this.
Growing ornamental grasses is particularly hard – and not just because the rabbit loves them. Some ordinary lawn grass grew around one precious Molinia caerulea Edith Dudszus…. And the rabbit carefully chomped the Molinia, leaving the lawn grass to flourish. Also, grasses can be the worst for staying in bed past getting up time and keeping me desperately looking for a sign of growth for far too long. But I grow a lot of them, just to be hard on myself.

Well, sometimes they are just dead? Though Carex buchananii always looks dead..

But is this going to come back?????
Not exactly Chelsea, is it? And I expect professional garden designers would get prosecuted for producing such efforts. But elsewhere at Veddw things do seem to have come through their early years (renovation is starting to knock on the door now) so perhaps I could feel optimistic. And reassure anyone contemplating a visit that we do still have gardens which are alive and thriving.
Spring is supposed to be such a wonderful time of year. And it is, except when it’s freezing cold, rabbit infested and sodden wet. And most of your plants are missing.
After 33 years though…

After 33 years some of the garden doesn’t look too bad. Then when it gets to this stage, you’ll find you’re having to rework things….(There’s that bloke again, getting in the picture…)
PS Charles assures me that rabbit’s days are numbered… Which number though, I ask myself?
excellent, finally some reality brought to gardening. You gained a follower 🙂
Excellent, thank you. Helps me deal with my embarrassment…….
Aargh! I can’t imagine trying to start new plants in a garden people are paying to see and expecting to look perfect.
I count on them gloating over our imperfections…….
I am having much the same experience as a volunteer establishing a prairie garden in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The biggest problem is the failures are seen by the public between the parking lot and front door of the botanic gardens’ conservatory. Maybe they appreciate seeing what kind of mulch is used.
Time we gave up on imagining perfection?
Anne this should be required reading for new gardeners. Excellent and so true! And so valuable to those who have false expectations after reading various vehicles of inspiration. Also worth mentioning — the shrubs that one can’t afford to buy larger than 12” — sometimes smaller as cuttings. YEARS later one has a hedge or a decent mixed border. And this is where my where my canna and banana prove their worth masking developing areas — though perhaps sparingly in wet cool Chepstow… ;;) —MW
Well, as it just happens, I did have some canna (a gift from a friend) in the Cornfield Garden, even in the cool and wet. They helped fill it initially but then came out as they didn’t fit the feel….. Well thought o garden expert from across the pond.
Cold and wet isn’t normal hear. Nothing is!
Right on Anne, Gardening is an adventure ….it is not a prescription for total success. And sometimes I actually let weeds grow because I am unsure if the plant is a perennial or even an annual in its early stages. I love flower shows and viewing other people’s gardens but frankly many are so contrived. I have two friends that viewed a garden with gorgeous hydrangeas. They asked the owner his secret as they were all in bloom at the same time. He confessed…he had purchased them at a local nursery ( in bloom) several days before and used them to fill in an empty space..
Shopping can be a great help!
Very funny. Love the ubiquitous rabbit.
I would gift it to you if I could. The deer have arrived now….
Loved your article! I’m reading it at my home in Wareham, Massachusetts!
That’s great. I didn’t know you have one too. Hope it’s a good place to garden, preferably without rabbits.
You have a rabbit that’s got through your defences? Good people of the USA, a visit to Wales might prove entertaining. You could rent the converted railway carriage in Anne’s car park (it’s en suite) and get up very early to catch a glimpse of her husband (that’s the bloke – Charles) out rabbit hunting with his gun. He shows no mercy! And the last time, he was out hunting in his birthday suit. Very dedicated, he is! Good people of the UK, you have less distance to travel but the potential view is the same.
How on earth did I miss that? Charles naked, out of doors?!!! Well, I hope he got the rabbit he was after that time.
Thank you for your brutal honesty. I so enjoy reading about the misfortunes of others!
We don’t open our garden to visitors, unless you count the odd friend or delivery person, but those bare patches you describe still fill me with shame. I read a Tom Stuart Smith plant list with envy bordering on despair.
Mercifully, we are still weekend gardeners and can’t spend every day examining the soil for signs of life. When we return on Thursday evenings, it is all a surprise, “pleasant or unpleasant” as Lady Bracknell would say.
Yes- I think a long pause between examinations of worrying parts of the plot is a good policy and may help you sleep soundly. Must try it. Xxx
Too true… hope the garden comes back … would love to see that pink and yellow
I have my fingers crossed – and two more of the pink planted …..!
Here in the lower North Island of New Zealand I have the opposite problem: there’s no general die-off in winter, especially among the weeds. When exactly is one supposed to cut back a lavender that has been in constant bloom for the last three or four years?
Well, that’s one problem I don’t have to worry about! And we do get winter off….
Rabbits? Get a cat. It’s the deer that are the destroyers. Maybe a very large cat. Puma? Panther? We have had a dry spring. Weeds not too bad- yet. Expecting a rainy cool Memorial Day weekend. I see weeding in my future.
Strangely we had to give our cat away as she had the bad habit of bringing baby rabbits over the fence into the garden and even the house..
We are reputed to have panthers locally but the deer population thrives. They may turn into a scourge in the garden but have – touch wood – done little harm yet.Fingers crossed.
Wonderful article.
Thank you, Charlotte!
Refreshingly honest, and a reminder that things in the garden aren’t straightforward or simple. This week I’ve been lamenting plants that never came up from seed, and also those lost to a tiny rabbit who doesn’t care that plants are coated with cayenne pepper or repellent sprays. I felt better after reading your post. I need to be reminded (perhaps daily) that I’m not completely in control of what’s happening out there so I need to just let it happen. And thankful I’m not the only one trying to figure out if those two tiny leaves are something I wanted or something I don’t want. Yes, every day, same thought…
Good to not feel alone with the stuff. Though someone on social media reproached me for not encouraging people to dive in. And it’s true – would I want that responsibility!?
The hugely frustrating thing about rabbits is that in our early years I spent a winter putting 1inch galvanised netting around the whole perimeter of our two acres. And then deciding later that it wasn’t high enough so spent more time and money raising its height. Close fitting gates were required at our drive and entrance to the garden and wood. Of course the occasional rabbit desperate to visit us burrowed under the fence but mostly when we have a rabbit in the garden it is because one of us has forgotten to close a gate. And maybe there has been the odd Olympic High Jump rabbit. We hadn’t had them for a couple of years which makes it all the harder when we find they are back. I say “they” because we did trap a baby one a few weeks ago. And my biology says that a) rabbits don’t have one baby at a time and b) babies have mummies. So when we trapped mummy rabbit a few days ago we were jumping for joy. Until I glimpsed another . But we will be rabbit free again. One day.
Great piece, Anne.
Honestly? The list of plants I’ve killed, deliberately or accidentally, stretches longer than anyone’s arm. The list of plants I bought, thinking they would be just the thing but weren’t, the plants I bought then forgot where I’d planted them, the plants that were thriving until I decided they needed to be transplanted: that list is even longer.
Any gardener who actually gardens sympathizes with the perils of others, and takes only a modest bit of glee, knowing that they aren’t alone.
Thank you Pat. That other gardeners, and in your case, a great one, suffer the same ways is a consolation. Gardens are the stupidest thing to pour our souls into! Xxxx
No need for embarrassment! If we all had perfect gardens (whatever those might be???) we would be bored and not garden any more. As for the rabbit, ours ended up in the freezer but I live in rural Maine. Are you allowed to trap? Don’t release it somewhere else to become someone else’s problem – that drives me crazy. Good luck with any remakes – they can be fun or they can be heartbreakers. May yours be the best fun!
Between you, me and the garden gate post we trap and shoot. But I think most of any British readers would faint with horror at the notion.
One of my favourite discoveries writing a book on pests was that someone had trapped a squirrel and painted it (gently no doubt) then released it miles away. It turned up in their garden again….