End of season
It’s autumn at the moment, (just?) and it seems the garden is blazing in glory with the autumn colours, even when the sun fails to shine. But amongst that are the beginnings of end of season decay:
Decaying hosta
We’re supposed to hate decay, but I’m not so sure – it really has its merits.
It’s evocative. I know we are supposed to merrily dance and sing as we welcome the flowers that bloom in spring, but that’s not all that life and gardens are about. We listen to music full of doom and sadness as in Requiems, and enjoy dramas and detective novels that are full of gloom and dead bodies. And sometimes we can enjoy a gloomy garden scene.
My friend, James Golden, has written a book about his garden at Federal Twist (not yet available in America, sadly) which is practically a hymn to decay…
Death
Sometimes decay and death in the garden can echo our own misery, while also bringing some comfort, and perhaps autumn and winter works best for that?
Our next door neighbour died several months ago, and the vagaries of Covid mean that her house stands empty and decaying. This is not good for her daughter, for sure, but it feels right in a way that having cheerful new neighbours taking over might not. (Especially if they make a lot of noise and disturbance renovating!) The house looks miserable, and that’s appropriate to end an era.
Nostalgia
For some reason which I forget, Charles and I visited the famous garden, Hadspen, in the interim before it became ‘The Newt’. And there we discovered the remnants of good times gone. It was sad, reflective, and there’s a pleasure in that when they weren’t your own good times.
You can read the whole story of Hadspen Garden transformed into a Visitor Attraction here.
The Ruin
We are surrounded by and very conscious of the history of the garden, and Charles’s excavation of the ruined cottage on our land brought us these remains of teatime and the odd drink… And perhaps most poignant, evidence of futile remedies.
Now it also contains the rusting relic of our first wood burning stove.
Beauty
Decay in the garden brings its own kind of beauty. I could not, as Piet Oudolf has sometimes perhaps suggested, plant only for the beauty of plants in decay, but I enjoy those I get. I have come to love the greys and browns of British winters. Our soggy wet winters don’t lend themselves to hoar frost and stately brown plants beautifying the borders, but the grasses look amazing until we reluctantly cut them down.
And look at this lot:
One of the very best things about hostas and hydrangeas is the way they go over.
You do have to like brown, though….
Are we changing at last?
People used to talk about ‘putting their garden to bed’. Thankfully this idea and whatever laborious practice it involved is dying out. We are being encouraged at last to allow our gardens to decay gently. We may even be developing an ability to appreciate our own decay. The BBC series ‘Killing Eve’ has a surprising number of women starring in it (and great clothes), including two very beautiful older women, who demonstrate just how beguiling and compelling an older face can be.
Harriet Walter
Fiona Shaw
Perhaps it’s time to celebrate decay?
Oh – nearly left Charles out. He won’t like that. And yes, he’s decaying too…
How evocative! Yes, there is something about decay indeed. I just did a walk-through of my small garden yesterday and I did notice the puddles of hostas with lords-and-ladies peaking through for contrast. There’s something very satisfying in letting them decay in place instead of cleaning them up.
But somehow I also still have roses blooming? It’s a bizarre contrast.
It’s an inbetween season with characteristic oddities?
Lovely!
Beautiful! Thank you so much!
I’m trying. Really trying not to put the garden to bed. It’s hard, with the neat neat neat people next door, thank goodness they put up a privacy fence so the comparison is not so drastic. I don’t want to leave it all to the busy spring. So I compromise. The peonies have to come down now so fungus or whatever doesn’t over winter. And when the hostas are slime they come out. And when the dried hydrangeas start blowing off and ending in the neat yard, they get whacked.
I sympathise with the neighbour pressure – but why would leaving it make for a busy spring? It’s easy to just cut things down then when they are dried up. Though I do cut down some places where I prefer the look….
In spring I end up stomping on all the bulbs coming up and gotta spread compost and get the vegetable garden going.
Great. Of course there’s beauty in decay in the garden, in all of nature. I always keep bouquets of dried flowers, too good to throw away, until they collect dust.
Thanks.
Our sitting rooms has dried flowers pinned to the beams. And they have been there for about 25 years. Bit dusty but still get admired. This is making me wonder if they’ve had their day now.
Your post is perfectly timed. I need to reflect again on the beauty of ruins.
Thank you, Pat.
30 yrs ago I was employed as a gardener. My supervisor kept saying, “Put the garden to bed.” I kept ignoring him. Now, in light of your article and others advising one to leave the leaves and the critters under them, I feel justified to have ignored him.
Rot on !
It’s tough, riding these things out on your own. Great to hear you did.
Lovely commentary and photographs. And “Federal Twist”, both the garden and the book, are amazing, as is James himself, of course. (Despite being across the pond, the copy I ordered from Book Depository arrived in October. Even James couldn’t explain how that happened!) But I had missed “Killing Eve”, so I thank you for that.
As a prairie gardener browns, golds, rusts and greys make up the winter landscape. The beauty is subtle but when the setting sun’s rays peak beneath the dark clouds and slant diagonally across gold hills of grass it’s sublime.
It’s amazing how beautiful winter can be.
Lovely post. Beautifully melancholy yet celebratory. Thanks!
Thank you too – and others who have been appreciative and commented. Xxx
I’ve never really liked a lot of color, it easily can become too much for me. Black and white photograph appeals. It is similar to my response to noise. Texture, structure and tone draw my eye to study. This book couldn’t be speaking to me louder. Thank you for this post. Those melting hostas are wonderful.
This is an interesting perspective and very good to hear.
One of my favorite architectural plants in my garden is mountain mint. I never cut it down, b/c by mid-winter/spring, all of the foliage is gone and what is left are these lovely button tops on nicely structured, stiff stems that branch nicely. Every spring, I cut some down and spray paint them a shade that will go nicely with whatever pansies catch my eye each year. Example: last year I bought a nice big pot of purple and yellow pansies, and stuck 5 long stems of the mountain mint artfully in the pot. It brings me such delight and truly elevates (literally and figuratively, I suppose) a humble pot of pansies to another level.
That’s wonderful recycling!
A wonderful rant. I keep photographing wilting, drying blossoms and plants and getting razzed about it. The beauty of plants goes far beyond catalogue-perfect blossoms. Our garden is browning and golding up, but the winter-blooming plants are coming into their own. The first Wintersweet is even blossoming already, bringing its exquisite fragrance into the autumnal transformation of the garden.
O, jealous of your Wintersweet. It sounds as if you are getting two seasons in one there..
Yes, I agree, perfect description, Carol, and thank you Anne!
Oh, good! I go out and enjoy the scene of the decaying garden, taking photos here and there and wondering, “Am I the only one?”
You are certainly not the only one. But I spent a lot of my gardening life feeling as if I am…..
Great essay! I especially loved how you compared the allure of a decaying garden to sad music or a tragic novel…I had never thought of that but it makes perfect sense.
Your decaying Charles looks very good with his white hair and beard.
Yep – he’s decaying well!
I probably leave too much to decay, claiming that it’s Natural Gardening and for the wildlife, when it’s actually just laziness. But most of my plants are native to our region, so I figure they aren’t “cleaned up” in the wild and they’re just fine. Usually I bow to Nature. But my new little Cottage Garden probably will need to be cleaned up religiously, if only to make space for growth of successional blooms throughout the growing season.
Nature loves our laziness – keep it up! If you don’t clear up, the soil is restored.
Excellent post with an unusual approach! But I must disagree with your characterization of Charles; he’s obviously in the prime of life and thriving!
O – of course!!
Lovely, just lovely—decay and all.
Thanks Allen! Xxx
Hear hear! I think there are a fair amount of gardeners who finally come to appreciate the beauty of decay when one season, they don’t have time to ‘put the garden to bed’ and are surprised by joy. A beautiful post and all points so well made. Bach’s Mass in B minor is far more appealing to me than Vivaldi’s Spring. -MW P.S. I have loved Harriet Walter’s gorgeous face since Whimsey days.
Love the PS – quite right! And I hope you are right about the fair amount of gardeners. Should we play them music then, to encourage them?!
One thing i have not seen in the post: When I leave things the weeds underneath start to grow and what I uncover in the spring is a grassy field which takes time, that I do not have, to remove
I suppose perennial weeds will, like the other plants, grow through the mulch the cut down plants create. Mulching stops most weeds seeding into your beds, but won’t kill them unless your cut down plants end up very deep, in which case they’ll smother the regrowth of the desirable plants too. This post may help clarify – https://veddw.com/general/smothering/?