Bramble & Briar is one year old this week. Thanks so much to all of you who’ve been here since the beginning, as well as to those of you who’ve joined somewhere along the way – I always count it an immense privilege to be given permission to wander into your email inbox, or to command your attention for the time it takes to read a post, and that’s something I’ll continue to honour.
“Let your garden be mine, too.” I was flicking through the back of the parish magazine, checking out the competition for the gardening round I was about to launch, when this particular strap line caught my eye. I could kind of see what the advertiser was getting at – suggesting a link between ownership and care that, as a proposition, is a little shaky in itself – though I had to admit it wasn’t an approach I’d been considering. Thirteen years on, I’m now in a position to claim with some authority that, though I definitely form an affinity with the gardens I tend for other people, to the extent that I feel distinctly a part of what’s going on in these spaces, I don’t ever look upon them in a proprietorial manner, and always remember who gets to make the decisions. The one thing I’ve learned above all others, is to work only for people who share your approach to gardening, even if they don’t quite have the time to be doing quite as much of it as they like (oh, and thing number two: sack any clients who don’t habitually offer to bring you a cup of tea. Biscuits are a bonus). Even in my own garden, I try to hold the whole question of ownership lightly, preferring to see myself as a steward of the space rather than its lord and master. And so suggesting to a prospective customer that I might have designs upon their garden is not such a good fit for me. (That said, the guy in question still runs the same ad, so it seems to be working for him. I like to think of his clients wandering down their garden path only to find him sipping margaritas while swinging in a hammock in his underpants, and that this state of affairs is just fine with everyone involved).
And yet...
This space on Substack is supposed to be about my garden, so it seems a bit cheeky to slip in a post about one of the gardens I work in. And yet I’ve come to think of this space as My Friday Garden which, my lovely clients will be relieved to hear, isn’t quite an expression of ownership, though it seems a sufficient claim to sneak it in under the Bramble & Briar radar. Well, that’s my argument, and I’m sticking to it (I know, I know... the hoops we make ourselves jump through, though if you’re a person of taste and discernment – and you’re reading this, so clearly you are – you’ll know I’m not alone in this, as
has only recently felt the urge to change the name of his own Substack publication, the better to reflect its always excellent content). Anyway, the upshot of all this mental contortion is that I’m able to share with you a little of one of my favourite gardens – and one which receives a lot more actual hands on gardening from me than my own.
The view from the bench where I habitually munch my lunchtime sarnie allows me to take stock of the two most formal elements in the garden – though it’s a pretty elastic use of ‘formal’ as a description. ‘Bonkers’ might be more accurate. The yew hedge in the background (mostly yew, with the occasional hawthorn or holly inclusion) was most particular when I first came to clip it into shape, insisting that straight lines were to be kept to an absolute minimum, that it would much rather roll like the sea, and that if it was to be ornamented with any creature, it should be a chicken, or a squirrel, and that none of us would know which for a couple of years (that time having elapsed, the Squicken seems to be resolving its identity in the direction of the latter). I was happy to oblige. For the past few weeks I’ve been weeding the beds like fury, but the early spring weeding window is closing as the hedges are beginning to sprout, and I’ll soon be called to pay them close attention. Having such a large presence that’s evidently clipped regularly into a tight, albeit free-flowing form allows us to let nature take the upper hand in other areas of the garden though, having played around with that tipping point, we’ve decided to pull everything back ever so slightly from the brink of wilderness this year.
Straight lines – probably the only hedge where I attempt such discipline – are reserved for the box that surrounds four of the veg beds and throws a long arm out towards the nuttery, taking into its embrace the currants and the strawberry patch. And right now the box is leafing up nicely, though in places still showing the effects of last year’s caterpillar attack (no blight since the year before, though I’m ever on the lookout). I’m careful to spray (organically) and feed with seaweed, which has allowed us to keep this element of the garden when so many other box hedges in the area have been ravaged. It’s neither a hugely onerous nor an expensive task – I’m convinced a fortnightly application of comfrey tea in the growing season would improve the resilience of any box hedge – and so far, we’ve been able to withstand the double onslaught. Leaf munching time approaches, but one observation during last year’s box-tree attack in my own garden has given me further hope. The apparent antipathy displayed by our garden birds to the caterpillars of the box-tree moth (Cydalima perspectalis) has been widely lamented by gardeners, but our resident sparrows appear to have developed a taste for them, the entire population of the box ball outside the back door disappearing overnight on several occasions, adult birds plunging in to grab the wrigglers and take them back to their noisy brood. It seems as though this delicacy has been a closely-guarded secret in the bird world, though there’s research to show that several species, including magpies, blackbirds, blue tits and starlings are catching on. We won’t be relying on the birds just yet, but it’s nice to know they’re joining in the fray, and on the side of the box.
It’s only Wednesday today. Two days till I’m back at my Friday garden, and I think it will be time to drag the hedge clippers out. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of that (and the other) to be done here at home, where every weed and incursion of the lawn into the borders seems to be a little note from Mother Nature herself. It reads, “Let your garden be mine, too”. I think she’s being generous with the wording – surely, it should be the other way around?
I always offer tea and a sandwich to anyone working on my home/garden. My dad was a carpenter and wouldn’t work for anyone that didn’t offer him tea, quite right too.
He has a hammock in his underpants? Impressive