Choosing plants. The most exciting thing in the world for any gardener, but especially when you have the thrill of a new garden to create.
Those wishlists that have been floating round your head for weeks, months, years can now become reality. The colours, the scents, the shapes - all is now possible, everything available at the swipe of a screen or a trip to a nursery.
I have been gardening in Dubai for the last decade, where these kind of choices are necessarily limited by extremes of heat and humidity, in an environment which can create more of a sacrificial altar than a soothing haven. The heirloom tomatoes? Scorched. The sweet pea seedlings? Miserable. The courgettes? Mildewed.
So it is that the fat soil of Herefordshire (as #TheMontyDon calls it) promises garden nirvana. Our site is windy, and some parts are stony, but really - what could be the issue? Drifts of colour wave alluringly in my head and I see vases of cut flowers filling room after room - and that’s before we have even started on the bountiful trugs of organic vegetables, all just waiting to flourish.
And then you start. The big plan. Two acres. Bed by bed, border by border, drafting new lists, pulling out old lists, retrieving scribbled comments in notebooks, checking bookmarks in favourite books, and, like a kid starting at school in September, pulling out your new set of coloured pencils. It all seems so easy - Lupins! Tulips! Fruit trees! Irises! Here a white bed, here a hot one, and throw in a couple of climbing roses so absurdly rampant they will probably be in the next county in a year. Arches of hops down one side? Of course. A spectrum of salvias? Naturally. Espaliered fig trees? Why not? A Mediterranean gravel garden? What could be lovelier for all those aromatic herbs? A shady corner? A must.
It is at this point in the process that the little voices - plural, you note - chime in. Structure throughout a whole year. Colour not just in summer, but in spring, autumn and winter too. That bed won’t look right from above. That bed is too windswept for that plant. That’s not naturalistic enough. You can’t plant that near a walnut tree. And don’t forget the pollinators. Oh, and the messy patch of nettles for the caterpillars. And suddenly that fizzing Christmas Eve excitement of anticipation is smouldering under a weight of anxiety that you are going to ruin the entire garden, plant the wrong things, waste tons of money and set yourself back a year. Minimum.
And therein, obviously, lies the way of madness. Because while gardening is a glorious, crazy 4D puzzle of time, space, soil and weather, it is also solely and precisely what you want to make of it. If you want a show garden, than you will have a fair degree of pressure year round. But for most regular green-minded mortals, if you really like something, all you can do is have a go at growing it, and then go forward from there. If it fails, tweak it and try again, or try something different. If you don’t like it, dig it up and change it. If you want a bed of acid yellow, and it makes you happy, go right ahead.
I am more than happy to be reminded of this in the next year or so, as we wrest beauty from our neglected acres. In the meantime, thank you to the gardening greats who have kept my dreams alive during my decade in the desert. From Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd to Katharine Swift at Morville Hall and Monty Don at Longmeadow, all underline the simple premise of planting, tending and propagating plants, and the pleasure it brings. I will hold on to my over-excited pick’n’mix dreams of flowers, and take my time.
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