So I am sat at my dining table in Dubai on a Saturday evening, which is the equivalent of a Sunday evening here fighting off the "Sunday blues" before I turn in. One son, Elliot is in Bangkok on his gap year and Jane and the other son, Sam are at Oaklands. So the family are spread across the globe and It is half term. I know there are some friends at Oaklands from Dubai, Gill and her two boys who are also out of school for half term and Sam has yet another school friend from Kenya at the house with their parents who are house hunting in the UK. Fantastic people who train the dogs for anti-poaching squads so the conversations will be interesting at my other home this evening, I am having a nice wine free weekend but have sent off instructions for which corks can be pulled from the wine rack. Supper has been cooked here early and I have exhausted the current box set addiction on Netflix. Richard Armitage dealing with "a Stranger" intent on wrecking families by revealing secrets. 8 hours of high anxiety, bullets, broken lives, car chases and discovered secrets with an awful ending. It didn't start well either - I have a love of Alpacas and one is decapitated in the first episode and left, in the High Street, minus its head which appears later in a bin bag in a suburban home. But I soldiered through to numb away what often feel like wasted hours at the weekend. So I come back to thoughts of Oaklands as that is time well spent. Forgive me if this rambles - it is that type of wistful evening and I am not the focused writer that Jane is - one or two good ideas for each post. But then I write for me when I am in the mood so that I have this record for another time.
Of more excitement than butchered Camelidea has been keeping up all week with the steady stream of photos on the family Whatsapp posted by Jane. The Landscapers have arrived on site and have broken ground on what we are calling "Phase 1". This seems a misnomer as we have already cleared a lot of ground - we had Ken on site at the back end of last Summer ripping out the old wind break of conifers from around the now filled in swimming pool. Pictures tell a thousand words - above is the view back to the house along what will be a winding S- shaped Hoggin track (think crunchy country house crushed stone path) that will bisect the garden into formal and informal sections. Inside the track and around the house will be a new raised sandstone terrace and two large rectangular Hoggin areas on which will sit in turn a dozen raised beds and the new glasshouse when that is afforded at some future point. There is also a small area for much needed compost and leaf mould production next to the "mower store" - not that we have a ride on mower yet ! The Mower store is gradually filling up with logs as I clear the wood of Laurel and log some of the fallen and unwanted trees that are in the way of the "plan".
So in essence the view at the top of this post is from the end of the winding path in the bottom right of the plan. We have been pre-warned that there is a "Somme" stage to get through. My unfortunate OCD on where to leave piles of Laurel brash was quite rightly been put firmly in check by Jane a couple of weeks back. Mighty machines are once more clawing, tearing, grading and in some instances demolishing garden features. So rest in piece the old hothouse/pool water heating house. Jane and her brother Mick managed to drag out the copper tank a couple of weeks ago before the bulldozer went in but sadly the price of copper has fallen from its highs a few years ago. Still a small fistful of crips notes was shared for fun sundries - gardening or rallying in Mick's case (I expect and hope a car part was purchased). The photos below should really be reversed but I don't have the patience this evening. Anyway the wanton destruction is apparent !
Back to the plan. It is very interesting to see how "Sam the Land" and his team work. Really clever guys and skilled at what they do. The garden is on a slope left (East) to right (West) and all of the hardstanding needs to be flat and accurately join to paths. I expect if you read this as a civil engineer or an architect or ... landscape gardener its bread and butter for you. As a man who only used a chainsaw for the first time in the last year or a heavy duty petrol driven strimmer and to my shame picked up a shovel in anger for the first time in a decade in the last few months I am always going to admire practicality. I am a lawyer and my tools are just my voice, a pen, a laptop and a few books ( I show my age as the youngsters use online resources). The nearest I have got to laying out any form of plan and realising it was a Minecraft world I built with the boys in our spare time when they were smaller. A virtual world but pretty impressive in scope. It takes more than a few clicks to build what these guys are doing for us. I am all admiration.
Here is a view we are looking forward to taking in often. I think the white paint mark here is the first few steps from the existing patio up to a straight path that takes on several forms - eventually mown as it stretches down to a small grove of (when planted) silver birch trees. Those will sit just in front of the now large and emerging cleared area in the wood in which the hundreds of bluebells we planted are pushing up. I am hoping we can draw the bluebells out from the wood into the birch grove so that in April there is a heliotrope haze at the end of this view. The primroses are coming in now in the wood and where the light has found its way to the floor, helped by the work last year they have multiplied and self seeded or even have just been reactivated in the seed bank of the woodland floor. Its an incredible thing - nature only needs a half a chance. Why do we often refuse her even that ?
So walking down this straight path you pass through Jane's planting around the house and then on through the pottager, stopping maybe, and then you will cross the big curved track and carry on straight down a mown path through the meadow to the wood.
Later in the year when the grass in the meadow is as tall as it was last Summer and the foxgloves are in abundance the graduation from formal garden to the transition through woodland flowers to the wood itself should be more apparent.
On the plan this line has a series of small fruit trees but we are debating the height of those as we want to keep the view. We are thinking about a low fruit hedge of espaliade apples. I suggested lavender as I have seen beautiful hedges formed in that way - but it's probably too damp I am told and in the Winter it would be good to keep some structure. So these discussions start as the "lines" appear. Its interesting and exciting and we have plenty of time to make choices and if it doesn't work - then you pull things up and start again. I have been dabbling in gardening books and Monty and Sarah Dons the "Jewel Garden" is a current bedside read. Longmeadow is not far away just outside of Leominster. I confess I stalked the garden on Google Earth after watching an episode of "Gardeners World". I am heartened that their garden evolved and changed - that mistakes were made and in essence the garden grew with them over time.
While I am discussing "lines" through the garden there is another line from the door of the greenhouse that takes in steps up through the pottager and then through two beds that Jane has coined the "Demi-Lunes" (quite formal again in shape) and then on over the Hoggin S-track (we are slowly finding names for features) and again into a mown path up to a bench seat looking back West across the whole girth of the formal garden. Another place to wander up to and sit. We were debating an arch or arbor between the Demi-Lunes. The Garden will need some height put back in. We have talked about another arch at the start of the S-track as it leaves the turning circle around the Oak tree in front of the house. I had an idea about hops which are very local to Herefordshire. I certainly think that the bench area with the West facing view should nestle under some form of arbor. I came across one seating area online that was constructed out of huge panels of insect hotels - a place for solitary bees.
That arbor would sit at the top of the string leading across the garden here.
For completion I guess here are some more photos that detail the first week's work. Broadly you are standing here where the formal standing for the glass house will be with its few raised beds and cold-frames. Its a fairly substantial glasshouse when afforded - 8 m x 4m - but I think it will be needed when I look at the size of the space and the amount of annuals and vegetable plants we will want/need to raise each year. Sweetpeas alone which are a favorite - you could easily plant 100 plants each year to raise enough for just say 8 or 10 hazel or ironwork pyramids. I love sweetpeas - thats a smell I want in the conservatory or kitchen all Summer on our tables. The jugs sit ready - several of them,
As I understand it the yellow post below marks the height of the new terrace so the bed that will fall away from the terrace and lap around the front of the house will be quite steeply banked. We will be perched up a little bit from the level of the existing terrace. `you will climb up to the terrace. through planting with a tray in hand.
Jane sent me her first planting ideas for one bed - all verbena, cranesbill, grasses and a purple sage. More design questions throw themselves up for her. Do you really want to sit on your terrace with a view of your visiting friend's parked cars and a garage but equally do you do want to screen off the views to the rest of the garden ? These are questions that occur to Jane as she wanders around and I think "yes thats a good thought" - but I have no answers as I am no plantsman. She will work through all of that with time and care.
This is the start of the winding path as it joins the existing turning circle on the drive. The view obscured by a large but useful pile of topsoil and bricks that will aid leveling and hard coring areas.
I guess I am in danger of writing a novel so I will pull up the key board stumps this evening and get my bedtime chamomile - possibly grab an expansive garden book with some inspiring pictures from Jane's garden bookshelf. "Garden Porn". I re-read this site now often as it is turning into something of a shared journal. It really does feel like we are "on the way" now with the big plan. It will all take some time - which gives us both time to read and consider - take thought.
If we miss a season this year of vegetables and the flower beds are not all planted from day one then to my mind that all is well and good. The Spring and Summer will swing round and the foxgloves and bees will emerge to a new landscape - the meadow will grow back and I can search for an orchid and get down on my knees to see who we are sharing the space with again.
As I sit in Dubai I am seeing the Spring Migration going overhead from Africa heading back into Europe. Thousands of birds pulsing North. It's a year since we were poised to move into Oaklands. Now we have the space we wanted, finally, after twenty years of dreaming I feel very lucky to be waiting for the bluebells to come in and to see the saved primsoses, and to wait to hear that buzz, the solid drone of hundreds of bees enjoying the blossom of the giant old lime tree. That 250 year old lime was battered and cracked by two storms in recent weeks but is ready to do its part again this year. The oak will start to put out leaves and the jays will be ready for the acorns at the turn again of the Summer. `They breed in the wood - hassling the tawny owl at turns I know is there but have not yet seen.
I am as much wedded to what is already there on the land as to what we will put in. The trick will be to make it one for us and nature. We have I guess 25 seasons to get it right before it might be a "bit too much" but thats an awful lot of time when you look back and see how much you have learned and executed on in a year. So if time drags for me in Dubai while I am waiting for opportunities to go home to be in my new beautiful space together with Jane then it is probably no bad thing as writing reminds me what it is all about. It sounds a little bit much but I want to leave that wood how its should be - fully alive and joined to a meadow and new pond and then to our house. Two weeks ago I was ready to pack up and fly home as I felt I could not wait to be there - but now I really can wait because everything will work out with time and care. We are very lucky.
Comentarios