Discovering the Garden

 Oddly enough when we came to look at the house, I didn't really notice the garden. That might sound an odd thing to say considering that we had been living in a townhouse with a 'garden' of some 17 feet by 25. 

We arrived to view the house on a cold and wet day in early March. Peering through the front hedge, I looked to see if the estate agent had arrived.(He hadn't) The rain grew grew heavier so the garden was viewed from inside the house. I remember being more concerned about the closeness of the houses behind us than what was actually growing.

Side access led to the front garden which was long and wedge shaped. Bordered on one side by a strip of woodland and over hung with native woodland trees. In fact the entire plot, if you were to draw it is like an isosceles triangle. The garage is plonked in the middle of the front garden, facing the house and leaving an area behind which is totally unseen from the house. A truly 'secret' garden. 

Fast forward two months to allow for the house sale to proceed and we moved in on a hot and sunny May day. The intervening months of sunshine had accelerated the growth of ....everything !!
This was a probate sale and there was no one to keep the garden in check so nature began to reclaim the garden.

When we first moved in there was a myriad of things to be done. Most tasks in the garden involved cutting back so that we could gain access to the gate/shed/garage. Pulling out over enthusiastic creepers from gutters, clearing blocked drains and cutting back so that windows could be opened.

They say that you should live with a garden for a year before doing anything, so you can see what nature reveals.

Having waited so long for a 'proper' garden, I was far too impatient to wait another moment, much less a year !  I hurried off to the garden centre and bought tomato and runner bean plants, keen to start on my 'veggie' patch. 

Photos from March 2020, pre house purchase, pre builders and before the tree surgeons arrived.

That fir tree was taller than the house and completely hid the garage !

One of our early tasks during our first summer was to clear some of the unwanted trees from the front garden. A number of conifers were dominating the light and creating too much dry shade. Our priority was the conifer right outside the house which was at roof height. It effectively blocked all the sunlight from what would become my mum's bedroom. It had to go.

I dislike removing healthy trees but when I examined the trunk, the tree looked to be far older than the house (which is less than 20 years old) so that made me feel better. As did the fact that the tree surgeons 'chipped' all the tree debris which was going to be used in mulches. Watching tree surgeons at work is quite fascinating. It's a skilled job, pruning, felling and safely removing large plant material.

And of course, once the land is cleared you can then start on the fun part of creating something new.

My Childhood Garden

 I remember my childhood garden quite vividly. I grew up in a post-war council flat on a sizeable plot of land. The flats were arranged in blocks of four, ground floor and first floor. We were upstairs so overlooked our neighbour's garden. Ours lay to the side.

My parents were not gardeners !

In the 1970s gardening as an activity fell into two categories. Those people who grew vegetables or worked allotments and cultivated for the table. These were the people who had 'dug for victory' during the Second World War.

And those middle class people who gardened for pleasure. Neatly striped lawns and manicured flower beds. Rose bushes sprayed to within an inch of their lives. My parents didn't have the time for either as they were too busy working. Looking after the garden was seen as just one more chore so our garden was largely just lawn.

Our front garden was bordered by a laurel hedge behind which stood two enormous (so they seemed to me) apple trees. A mass of frothy white blossom in the Springtime and producers of Bramley cooking apples later in the year. My childhood was rich with stewed fruit, pies and crumbles. But the trees did not remain for long. Apparently they had 'some sort of disease' so men with chain saws arrived and we were left with two ugly sores on the lawn. 

To the far side of the garden were double gates, a rudimentary driveway and the footings of a garage. Long since knocked down. As a toddler there is a photo of me standing next to rose bushes in this area of the garden but by the time I started school, the area had been grassed over. Front and back gardens were divided by laurel bushes, fast growing conifers and a large forsythia bush. By the front door was a privet hedge, home to a hedgehog family, the only flower bed in the entire garden. A place for my dad's wallflowers and my sunflower plants. In later years my parents planted a honeysuckle which flowered profusely.

The back garden was more of the same. Home to my childhood swing, the bird bath, numerous lilac bushes and a stunted apple tree. That was allowed to stay 'for the birds' as the fruits were sour and inedible. It was also home to a very large laurel bush which was my own private domain. Easy to climb, I spent hours camped out in that tree, observing the neighbours.

There was no fixed boundary between us and our downstairs neighbours and I was able to wander at will into their back garden. Apart from an area for drying washing, it was entirely given over to the production of fruit and vegetables. My first introduction to allotment style gardening. There was a large damson tree at the far end of the garden, gooseberry and blackberry bushes. I was involved in the harvesting of all of these...and the subsequent jam making and tasting.

At one end of the garden was a beautiful hydrangea bush. It was a very intense blue, unusual growing on a clay soil but my neighbour showed me the secret. You had to feed the plant iron to keep the blue colour. She would bury rusty nails and horse shoes beneath the plant. My first introduction to hedge-witchery !

My parents didn't really use the garden to 'relax' in. Granted there were a couple of fold up garden chairs and occasionally my mother would suggest 'tea in the garden-picnic style' on a blanket. But my father had an abhorrence of insects, a legacy of his time in the tropics. At the first feel of an ant on his skin or a wasp flying past and he would head back indoors. I'd been stung a few times and was nervous of anything that flew or buzzed so al fresco dining was never a success .The garden was something we viewed from the windows and walked into to take the rubbish out.

Once I'd reached the age of about eight and could reliably tell the time, I didn't play in the garden. I was out with my friends making camps in the local woods or careering around on bikes and roller skates.

Having the patience to appreciate a garden and growing things was something which would come with time.

These photos were taken in 1989. 

The Potted Pope-the garden blog.

 Over the past 12 or so years I have kept many different blogs. For many different reasons. Blogs about subjects as diverse as Home education, study as a mature student and working in the Heritage sector. I have started and stopped writing but then last year we moved house.

For the first time since my childhood I found myself with a decent sized garden and the time to learn how to develop it. The somewhat bizarre name of this blog comes from the former owner of the house (a Mr Pope) Plus I have always used containers in my gardens.

Our garden from front to rear boundary is probably around 100 foot long. The house is on the edge of an estate, on the edge of a West Sussex village built on land which was once the former Victorian Pleasure grounds of a large Georgian property. A number of the trees have preservation orders on them as a result of being historical specimens and not far beneath the surface lie older pathways. It is not unusual to be digging in the garden and discover rusty horse shoes !

So here it is-my new blog recording the creation of a garden.

photo credit Annetta Starowicz Fotografia