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Authors: Margery Fish

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BOOK: We Made a Garden
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It was getting towards winter when I started. I studied the ground for days on end, looked at it from every angle, drew plans on paper and, by degrees, ideas took shape.

The first thing to do was to make a path up to the orchard, and this I decided must be slightly curving. The lay-out was irregular so we couldn’t have anything too formal, and my idea was to have something simple and cottagey to go with the long low house.

To get the first level I made low, stone steps, with a fairly high wall to support the earth. On this level I made very wide paths to give the feeling of space. They were gravelled in Walter’s day but since then I have paved them, and now the effect is of a gracious terrace.

I decided to make the garden on each side of the path a series of terraces, each terrace supported by a low wall, in which I planned to grow rock plants. Paths were to be made between the terraces.

I didn’t realize at the time that I was setting myself the hardest task any gardener could have. Everyone knows that the easiest border to arrange is one against a wall or hedge. A double border which must be attractive from both sides is difficult, but what I was trying to do was to make a series of borders, each of which must look well from four angles and must also combine with the borders in front and behind. I had three terraces on the left, and three on the right, but on this side I had to dovetail in a fourth, triangular, bed to fill up the space.

We all know the saying about fools. When I think of it now I wonder how I had the hardihood to attempt such an ambitious scheme. I had never done any gardening before we went to Somerset and had certainly never even thought about garden design. It might have been the most abysmal failure, but I didn’t think about that. My only thought was to get the project under way before Walter took an interest in what I was doing and complicated matters with too much criticism and advice.

We had a very early fall of snow that year and I can remember walking out my plan in the snow. Walter was a fair weather gardener and I knew he’d busy himself with indoor jobs while the weather was bad and leave me to my own devices.

First of all I dug out trenches and made my low dry stone walls in them. We had a liberal supply of stones and I was able to choose fairly even pieces and made quite presentable little walls.

After the walls were done I dug out the earth in front of them to make paths between the terraced beds. It was then that Walter made an appearance and was quite horrified at what he saw. ‘Why on earth are you making canyons?’ I explained that they were the paths and begged him to be patient. The weather was still bad and he was full of indoor schemes so he left me to the mud and chaos.

Levelling the beds was the worst job of all. I knew enough to save the top soil and take away the clay underneath, but the problem was what to do with the stuff. I had heaps of good soil all over the place where I was working and the clay had to be wheeled right away and dumped somewhere in the lower garden. The only way to get it there was down a plank over the stone steps. It was cold and damp with mud everywhere and the wheelbarrow was always tipping itself over as my unskilful hands tried to balance it on the greasy plank.

Luckily it was a mild, if wet winter, and by the early spring I had done most of the work. It didn’t meet with approval and I admit it did look bleak. Every morning at breakfast I was greeted with ‘Stones, stones, stones!’ Or it might be a query ‘How is the floral quarry this morning?’ Walter’s bathroom overlooked that part of the garden and as he liked to dawdle over his bath and shaving he had ample opportunity to gaze with horror on what I had done the day before.

He evidently thought about it for when the day came when I had finished the construction work and was ready to start planting he said ‘Now we’ll put in the pole roses’. ‘The what?’ I asked, aghast. As the house was a low one, and was built on a very much lower level than this part of the garden, I had planned to plant my beds with low growing plants, to give a tapestry effect, and if I wanted any very tall things they were to go at the back and at the sides. I had widened the path winding up between the beds and it was on either side of this path that the roses, trained up their poles, were to be planted. And they were. There was nothing I could do to stop it, no argument had any effect. Walter assured me that they would be the making of my garden and I’d like them in the end, so they were planted with due care and ceremony and I had to plan my planting round them.

I can’t remember all the roses we chose; there was nothing very outstanding among them except, perhaps, Cupid, which I think is one of the loveliest of climbers, with its large single shell-pink flowers and golden stamens. It has the most devastating thorns I know but I can even forgive it that lustiness for the beauty of its flowers. Others we chose were Chaplin’s Pink, Climbing Lady Hillingdon and General McArthur, Melody, Paul’s Scarlet and some very old ones such as Gloire de Dijon and Wm Allen Richardson.

I discovered that it was unwise for me to plant too near the roses. This was not only because their wandering branches clawed my hair and scratched my hands, but to keep out of the way of the manure with which Walter fed them. Walter believed in manuring with a very generous hand and woe betide any little plant of mine that grew nearby, as it would surely die of suffocation under the great gollops of manure that were plastered round every rose. All the manure we could get was devoted to the roses and dahlias. Neither of us was very concerned about the welfare of the vegetables. If sometimes I thought any of my children were in need of a little stimulant I had to steal little bits from the roses when my husband was not looking. When I was doing this I always remembered his oft repeated belief that women had no sense of honesty!

When, later on, we were able to get more manure and I was allowed a little Walter did not like the way I used it. He always accused me of being mean with manure, and disliked very much the way I used it on my flower beds. I was so frightened of getting the manure on the plants that I took endless care to dot the ground with small pieces, well away from the plants. As we drove round the countryside Walter delighted in pointing out the massive heaps of manure dumped quite close together all over the fields, waiting to be spread. That is the way to use manure,’ he’d say, ‘not the way you put it on.’ I still use manure sparingly on the flower beds. We spread it lavishly in the kitchen garden but only the roses, and such things as delphiniums, phlox and dahlias, which have big appetites, get really big helpings. Christmas roses like some manure in the summer; it helps to keep them moist if it is not possible to give them plenty of water. Many people consider too much manure on the flower garden produces too luxuriant foliage at the expense of the flowers. It depends, I think, on your soil and what you take out of it. I cram my beds with plants and feed them well, and my hard clay soil needs plenty of humus. Even if you are not a manure fan it is not a bad idea to water your plants with manure flavoured water just before they are coming into bloom. If you have no liquid manure, to be well diluted before being used, it is quite easy to drop a small sack of manure into a watering can, leave it for a while and use the infusion. The plants will show their gratitude by giving even better blooms than they did before.

8. Planting

I learnt a great deal from Walter that first year of gardening. The first thing I learnt was that he knew a great deal more about the subject than I thought he did. I was a complete novice, and I thought that he was too. I knew he had had gardens and gardeners, but I assumed that being very busy he had left all the planning and work to them. I may say I got very tired of one particular gardener during that first year. He was quoted at me morning, noon and night until I came to hate his name. Everything he did was perfect, he never neglected anything and he always did all the jobs that needed doing at the right time. It was no good for me to tell Walter that I had to sandwich my gardening between housekeeping! household jobs and a certain amount of social life. In his opinion there was no excuse for not getting things done at the right time.

Another of his gardeners had my sympathy, and I think there was a moral for me in the tale of his undoing. This man had one joy in life and that was to grow wonderful chrysanthemums in pots to bring into the house in the winter. According to Walter he used to stroke and fondle his chrysanthemums so much that he was neglecting the rest of the garden. Remonstrances had no effect so one day Walter took a knife and slashed off all those pampered darlings at ground level. It was by remembering this episode that I learnt to have a sense of proportion and fairness in my gardening, and not devote too much time on the things I like best at the expense of the rest of the garden.

The first inkling I had that Walter held very definite views was concerning the level of the flower beds. I had always seen them raised above the surrounding grass or path, and I made mine in the same way. I suppose the original idea was for better drainage and to allow one to get the best possible view of the plants. Rose gardens are still often made in this way, and one sees it in parks and public gardens. I never thought of it before Walter pointed it out, but the whole idea is superficial and a bed that is absolutely flush with the
path or lawn looks larger and far more attractive. Now that I have paved paths I am even more enthusiastic over the idea as I plant sprawlers as near the path as possible so that they spill over the path and break the hard line. In Walter’s day I had to be careful that nothing spilled over the path, which was then gravelled, as the roller did not recognize the rights of sprawlers. A plant that benefits from this level way of planting is
Gentiana acaulis.
It likes being trodden on and I plant borders of it so close to the path that they regularly receive attention from my full-sized feet.

We used some of our plentiful supply of stones to keep the beds separate from the gravel paths. In my ignorance I first put them in vertically so that several inches protruded above the ground, but after it was pointed out to me I realized that the effect was far pleasanter and just as effective if they were laid flat. One thing Walter taught me was to avoid unnecessary distractions. One must have something to separate flower beds from paths but one should not draw attention to the border and so detract from the flowers themselves.

It is surprising that in quite good gardens one often sees a gravel path merging straight into a flower bed. It is bad for the path because earth inevitably mixes with the gravel and one gets more weeds than ever. Something neat is needed, that blends into a picture. We were lucky in having plenty of stones, and I was able to pick out flat, even-shaped stones with one straight edge at least. These were laid very carefully so that they were level on top and the straight sides were used to make the edge of the path. If I’d had straight paths I should have used a line, but I had to rely on my eye to get a straight effect for my curving paths. Some people use bricks, and they look quite well if laid flat, particularly if there are brick paths. Sometimes they are put in diagonally to make a jagged edge, and that I think is a pity, rather reminiscent of the horrid little fancy tiles so beloved by Victorian gardeners. I’d treat them both the same way and cover them up at once with luxuriant greenery if I couldn’t remove them altogether. Sometimes one sees shells in cottage gardens, which may be quaint but are neither very effective or attractive. Unobtrusive concrete mouldings are as good as anything if they are laid almost on the level of the path and are weathered to match the gravel.

In some gardens plants make a successful edging. In the more spacious days little box hedges were the answer, but cost and labour these days make them a luxury. London Pride or thrift can both be grown in an even band and need little attention. A low lavender hedge is sometimes used, and in wide borders, something massive is in keeping, megasea or
Stachys lanata
are ideal, or even acanthus where space is really no object. Some of the tight growing mossy saxifrages will keep the peace between path and bed, or even those sturdy double daises that grow about four inches high. I have seen nepeta clipped as a hedge but that is a sacrilege. The whole beauty of nepeta is its graceful loose way of life, and soft blue flowers, and to confine it to rectangular form is most unappreciative. With paved paths there is no problem. The earth comes right up to the path and gives several inches of extra space in which to plant.

On the whole I had very little interference with the way I planted my beds, but I was urged to prevent monotony by having an occasional tall plant right in the front of the beds. I obeyed this so literally with some lupins that one had in the end to be sacrificed because it got so enormous, so I chose my accents more carefully afterwards. It was Walter who gave me the idea of planting groups of irises right at the edge of the path, so that their clean upward thrust made contrast with the low growing plants on either side. He also taught me the value of massed effects, so instead of an odd delphinium dotted here and there, as I would have planted them, he insisted that they were planted in groups of five or six. I realized that this was the only way to avoid a spotty effect.

I went through some dreadful times when I first started planting. In spite of all my efforts quite a lot of clay was left in the soil, and the harsh March winds whipped it into hard nodules which made the most uncomfortable homes for my newly planted creatures. I know better now and, though I have improved the soil immeasurably, I always use a mixture of sand and peat when planting, particularly with small things. Then I see that the roots are spread out and every little fibre has close contact with this good rooting material. Such treatment makes them feel snug and at home and they hardly know they have been unrooted from one place and transported to another. The worst thing you can do to a plant is to permit an air pocket anywhere near its roots, and this is what I am ashamed to say I did when I first began gardening. My planting was so insecure that the plants lurched about in the bed and were blown this way and that by the wind. Like a woman holding on to her hat they were too busy trying to keep a foothold in the earth to give a thought to anything else. Firm planting is one of the first essentials, and it is a good idea to give a little tug to anything that is just put in to make sure it is firmly anchored. I always test my cuttings in the same way, though not quite so vigorously.

BOOK: We Made a Garden
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