January 2017: Winter gardens and pruning

January, 2017

We bought a bungalow in 2015  which we believed had been empty for a few years. The previous owners had obviously loved the garden and there were lots of things we loved about it too: plants I had grown up with in Scotland (peace and peony roses), trees which shaded the garden and offered potential for future use of the trees, and first and foremost it was three times the size of the garden we were moving from.

herb garden

two of the pollarded trees

Eighteen months in and occasionally I sometimes wonder if we bit off more than we can chew and we have had some unexpected calamities which were due to the neglect/lack of infrastructure brought on by an absent owner. Don't get me wrong, I am not afraid of hard work but sometimes actions that seem to make perfect sense when they are discussed, even sketched on paper, have unexpected repercussions; unexpected tree roots or disease can make those plans disappear in an instant.

One of the three neglected trees at the bottom of the garden – a horse chestnut – was rotten throughout but we only discovered that after bringing in tree surgeons to pollard the trees. The immediate response: 'we'd advise you to take this one down: I wouldn't like to see it fall on your kiddies' was all it took to have an enormous trunk falling (in a managed way, with ropes) onto the sheds and concrete compost bin and smashing their way to the ground! We still have the chunks we thought we could burn in our woodburner (not a chance!) rotting into insect homes behind a shed...

watering herbs in January?

Chainsaw action!

We also have a robin who takes an interest in our summer barbecues and joins us on the picnic table. He joined us today (mid January) when the chainsaw was cutting into the two prickly hawthorns beside the herb garden. Agitated he was and then Dan discovered nesting sites in the hawthorn. I tried to get a pic of the robin today but he is definitely camera shy.

I do have great plans for the garden and have half an eye on designing it for an unknown future: we have young children now (who were keen to water the herbs today despite the showers earlier) and I don't want my future garden to just work for my worst case scenario, it needs to work for teenagers and family visitors too. We went round c.14 gardens during Open Gardens week in Letchworth last year and saw many ideas for our garden but we have to make the budget, orientation and plants work for us. We inherited four sheds when we moved in which are in varying states of decrepitude and we'd like to dismantle and rearrange modern sheds but again that all takes time, planning and finances. It also requires scheduling visits to garden centres and shed assemblers in such a way that small children are amused or at school!

I sense that we have taken on a serious project, which one year in already involves losing the herb garden we installed last year. I hope to show work in progress and future plans as time goes on.