Paradise

Closely boarded jungle

Passionate gardeners believe in paradise, their own precious plots of paradise. However, I do wonder if we have a problem with our eyes.  For much of the 10 years Doc and I have lived at Springfield, the most striking and memorable sights have been ones like these.  Beauty seems to be a collection of fleeting moments glimpsed whilst we push laden wheelbarrows back and forth, ruining the grass in the process. 

If we don’t have a jungle, we have a building site or a mountain of logs to chop.  There are industrial sized bags of leaf mould and compost and heavy equipment like machetes, mowers, strimmers and ladders cluttering up the place.  Then of course we have huge bonfires producing horrible ash clouds and don’t even get me started on the washing out on the line.  Whatever happened to ‘England’s green and pleasant land’?  Why do gardening books never show what real garden’s look like most of time?

The boundary of one side of our garden has always been informal and amiable.  However, our neighbours have cut back some overgrown trees and Doc has knocked down the old summer house and massacred the banks of rhodies in front of our terrace, so it seems appropriate to improve the boundary with a fence.  It will give us scope for something more aesthetic in that part of the garden.  So we now have a trio of God-like men building a fence for us.  They fear no weather and by the look of the sweat on their faces, they need more than our tea and biscuits.  We salute them.

Hedges are more attractive than fences and they are good for wildlife but we have miles of them already.  It takes days to cut them every year so we also have the expense of paying someone to do it for us.  In any case, a newly planted hedge would not thrive in the shade of a row of trees.  So fencing it is and jolly good fencing it is too.  We decided that choosing the DIY store cheap and cheerful panels - which wobble in the slightest breeze - would not be value for money.  Our fencing is good quality, with workmanship that hopefully ensures it outlives us. 

‘Mick the Mole’ is the digger.  He is a dab hand at using a mattock and pick axe. G and R put the thick posts in and they all hammer in the boards together, section by section.  There is over a 100 feet of fencing and at 6 feet high, the boundary is starting to resemble the Berlin Wall.  Doc says he is going to spray paint the fence a National Trust green which, if it gets too windy, may mean everything within 20 yards will be painted National Trust green!  But hopefully, it will blend in nicely with the row of trees.

The work on the boundary means we have to re-think the water barrel and pipe in front of it.  We collect water from the gutters on the house and this not only fills 2 huge barrels behind the woodshed but gravity fills barrels down the garden too.  Since we do not want to waste this water and use it in the veg plot, Doc will have to dig a trench and sink the pipes and barrels. To use the water, we will have to use a hand pump but hard work never hurt a husband!!

Our vision is to cut back our borders to the new, green fence, re-plant the area with more decorative shrubs and perennials and build a garden room with landscaping around it which includes a pergola draped with scented climbers.  If we re-vamp the grass in front of the garden room too and make it into a lawn, we will have the perfect south-west facing paradise from which to enjoy the sunset over the valley...............

There I go again.  I must remember to remind Doc to chop those logs.