It is several years ago since I photographed the garden across the year for this blog. Since then life has changed. My wife became seriously ill and now requires 24/7 care at home. My time for 8 hours a day gardening disappeared overnight. Fortunately there were two young people in the village trying to turn gardening into a career. I was their first client and helped then build up a round. Between them they come ten hours a week, Conor trims hedges, maintains trees, and does hard landscaping. Grace is a plantswoman. When they come, we work together and we achieve more in ten hours than I achieved alone in forty. They work all winter, preparing for spring, a slack time otherwise for gardening contracts.
Thus the garden has changed enormously within the same overall plan. And it is easier to work. I will show you around it bit by bit, but am starting today with photographs taken on a rare sunny April day. First though a few principles. A garden should balance wild and domestic. Weeds are plants and many are featured in Chelsea. But they are domesticated through deliberate design. Some are thugs and not useful, like bindweed and ground elder, and need removing. Snowdrops are helpful, and we also have wild ('flag') irises and bullrushes. Currently the pink wood anemones are beautiful. To those are added exotic species brought from China, South Africa, the Americas and the middle east. I am a plant collector first and gardener second. You won't find wall-to-wall tidiness.
So, some photographs.
Caltha, kingcup
camellia williamsii
Ribes, white flowering current
magnolia stellata
pink wood anemones
asiatic hellebore
the alpine garden
dwarf comfrey, hidcote blue
a chance unique mutation, purple leaf celandine
japanese dwarf rhododendron (2 photos)
two red-prink flowering current (ribes)
phormium with corocosma behind
Gordon's flowering current, ribes gordonianum
ribes odorata (yellow)
photinia red robit
white evergreen clematis (2 photos)
spring bed, hellebores and alliums
