Making Veddw Garden: Part 20. The New Garden

We ran out of names, so: The New Garden:

 This was an empty space for a very long time, though I did make (very) odd ventures into planting it sometimes. I thought it would be fun to have a garden full of barley, but that didn’t work. So no beer making.

Eventually – my memory is not so hot about this, but maybe around 2013 – I decided it would be good to have a garden planted in lines. I imagined lines of plants running across which you could look down as you walked down the path on the side of the garden. Giving a view of layers of plants mounding up like the seats in a theatre, viewed from the seat at the end. I imagined the drama of one row playing against another. The contrasts of flower and foliage. You can see a vague go at it here:

The Panicum virgatum ‘Northwind’ (sticking up grasses) at the front were quite fun in winter:

but not right the rest of the time. They obscured the view if you sat in the wrong place. I decided they needed to go at the back instead of the front. The two of us, with much effort, managed to dig them up and replant them. With the unexpected result that two bits stayed, in daft places, and most of the moved ones sulked. I think that at the back there are just about, several years later, three of them begining to get going again. The ones that stayed and regrew are, idiotically, one at the corner and the other not quite at the other end.

My plan rapidly began to break down.

It is a garden I have frequently despaired of. I was partly handicapped by a shortage of planting money and a plethora of weeds. But over time I’ve done as I do elsewhere: looked a lot and added plants, as and when I could, which seemed to be aesthetic and financial possibilities. And it does take such a long time for perennials to mature and begin, if they survive, to show what they are about.

But I did love that we added the fencing. (Quick trip back to winter)

and the containers of Heliotropium arborescens ‘Midnight Sky’ and Osteospermum something:

I was greatly encouraged when I sat there for some time with my great friend Sue. We sat and looked and gossiped and looked for a long time. And eventually, somehow, something which had looked a total mess began to look better. To both of us, I think. A curious process, but it was as if we began to see the order and what was working.

I believe, if I remember rightly, that we decided it needed some additions. Shapes – maybe topiary or repeated bulky foliage plants. We couldn’t quite see what…… But it is amazingly helpful having a garden friend with a good eye and imagination.

So it all kind of marinated in my mind for a while, until I remembered the fallen beech and the planks that Angus had cut from it. I wondered about making a fence of the planks across the garden diagonally.

We investigated how to mount the planks and the dreaded ££££s came into the picture.

And looking at the space, in winter, Charles and I decided that maybe just three planks might work. I had a picture in my head by then of our local prehistoric monument, Harold’s Stones – three standing stones. I like to connect the garden to its place in the world.

They are BIG! And haven’t fallen over. Not quite.

Impressive!

Charles took the project on

and got some supports 

 

and we worked out the relationship of our standing slabs.

I know – seen this before…

At first and in spring they stuck up rather crudely. With the supports visible. But soon the plants were growing up around them.

Charles wanted to give his own gesture to their origin, so we added the name of the storm which had donated the planks to us. Hence ‘Arwen’. The name sign tends to run in the rain, looking like real grief for that tree.

These – planks? – are the right addition. And the planting is begining to work for me as it fills out. It’s been a grim year, with collapses from drought and cloudbursts, but still it has fascinated me. I’ve felt that I’ve never seen anything like it before. You may feel the same, in a rather different way.

When Marianne Willburn last visited she walked in and declared that they are all American Prairie plants. So so much for my rarified and random planting. It’s a Prairie Planting. Hm. But is it block or matrix planting? (matrix obv)

Some of the plants:

I love the Valerian which last year grew to the sky:

and this year, perhaps more happily, grew to about four feet. (Do not mistake it for Centranthus) Starts in June and then goes on for ages – and seeds enthusiastically. Hence part of the breakdown of the lines, but I do love having it randomly around the space. I was still loving its seedheads in September.

Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria), is a plant I love and which seems happy here. (Is it illegal in America?)

Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Alba‘ makes a great line. And stays in place!

Yellow Flag Iris looks good in the spring.

But this is still definitely a work in progress. It will look GREAT next summer!

Charles:

The storm felled beech provided us with a lot of firewood but it would have been criminal not to make better use of the wonderful huge trunk.

First Angus cut off four sections about four feet long and then sliced off two sides. These became very comfortable benches for our fields. But he was keen to offer to plank up some of the remaining trunk. He made about 20 planks about 2 inches thick which have been sitting under cover for four years.

I chose the longest and widest for this garden. I hadn’t come across these chunky galvanised screws before but they all went in with a supplied winding bar, so they are really solid and the brackets on their tops were just the right size. The boards got several coats of a protective oil to also enhance the grain. I’m dead pleased with them.

And because the wood is not sitting on the ground they should last a while. Oh, and the “fence” is concrete reinforcing mesh and I love its rusty finish.