The contractors are finished and gone, the 500-odd pots are stacked away, and the new plants are settling in. The beds are immaculate when they finish them, Corten steel edges just showing, soil raked to a carpet-like smoothness, not even a hint of a weed. Of course you know that the next thing to happen will be the mess and disturbance of planting, and that is incredibly exciting, but there is still that moment when you gaze upon those pristine expanses and think ‘maybe I should just mulch it and think about that section of the plan more in the context of spring planting’. If you really, really want a full bed quickly, you can spend thousands and buy a border’s worth of mature specimens (though I am relieved to read that this is considered a rookie error), but assuming you are aiming for some degree of settling in and development, this strange moment when you put the first sprig of green into new soil, that groundbreaker plant in the new bed moment, is always going to be a little bit disappointing, because it is by necessity one (or several) steps before you reach - or you hope to reach - that perfectly balanced vision you carry, and through which you have walked so many times over in your head. You have to cleave to the knowledge that next year that pathetic twizzle of green you are digging a hole for now will, by next June, be twice as wide and five times taller, and often will not appreciate too much crowding by its neighbours, especially if it is something like an aster.
And therein lies one of the great delights of gardening, that eternal challenge to think in colours (there are many ways to play a colour wheel), in time (time to maturity, typical lifespan, annual or perennial, etc), in seasons (will it rise, flower and die back without trace in one glorious month, or appear in May and still have fabulous seedheads in November?) and in shapes and dimensions (spires and umbels, arching or upright, thin and willowy or shrubby cushions, and so on). I am aiming to make these new beds all-season, meaning something of interest year round, and that brings its own challenges. Gardeners will often decide to make a certain area the spring bed, or the late summer/hot bed, but this is often in places where there are ‘rooms’ or areas partly concealed from one another, allowing you to divert from the spring area when it’s August and nothing is happening there. Here at Oaklands, these phase 2 borders are the most visible, as they run each side of the house and flank doorways and entrance paths, and so require at the very least structure and ground cover. Herbs are the easy win on the western/lime tree side - in full sun, sages, oreganos, lavenders, hyssop and thymes fill out quickly, with lovage and fennel and musk rose giving height, and further down where the lime casts its shade, the soft leaf options of parsley, coriander, dill and sweet cicely should by next spring be covering the ground well. On the eastern/entrance side, the coolest north-eastern corner holds white anemone ‘Honorine Joubert’, with the starry-flowered gillenia trifoliata and ferns and hostas. A step up the small wall and the sloping beds are sunny, and home to peonies, roses, veronicastrum alba and what used to be called perovskia or Russian sage, but is now known as the rather more Sino-friendly salvia yangii. Sign of the times, perhaps. Height here from the wall itself at 2m’ of warm Herefordshire sandstone, and from the pink hawthorn ‘Paul’s Scarlet’ plus - if it settles - they are notoriously tricky to get going - the beautiful crinkled leaves of hamamelis (witch hazel) ‘Pallida’.
Here also lies the new turf, resplendent in pure emerald after so much rain. As some of our earlier posts suggest, we both have fairly strong views on lawns and their value relative to meadow-type spaces in gardens, but I have to say there is something incredibly restful about an unbroken stretch of fresh grass. Busy, well stocked beds are delightful, but any space, indoor or outdoor, needs contrast and some stretches of neat verdancy provide just that. You also forget how much new grass blades gleam, giving thousands of tiny reflections of sunlight, and again forming that counterpoint to the multiple variations of leaf and flower forms in the borders.
Grass-watching aside, life continues elsewhere, with the sense that I am keeping an ever more tenuous grip on the potager and linked areas while absorbed in the new works. The pattern of rain and warmth has continued through August, giving a lease of life to every weed seed lurking in the hoggin grit paths, and even emboldening ones which were buried under woodchip mulch at the start of summer. The courgettes have pulled the old ‘oh look, I’m a marrow now’ trick, the mange-touts collapsed under their own weight, and the raspberries which I was so sure didn’t need staking most surely do. The highlights thus far - there are some - are carrots, onions and leeks grown on Neil’s behalf coming through really well, the cavolo nero, as last year, just producing crop after crop, followed by blackcurrants and garlic. My first attempt at growing garlic, and it has immediately earned its place on my annual roster - one line in a raised bed has given us a crop of beautiful pink garlic bulbs, with a fantastic flavour.
The currants, thus far at least, have avoided any marauding raids by birds, and having enjoyed a jar of soft set blackcurrant jam from friends, I decided on a whim to use our own crop for jam. Currants are the perfect starter jam: so rich in pectin you don’t have to worry about the jam setting, or using special fruit sugars - just equal weights of cleaned fruit to sugar, sugar fully dissolved in the fruit over a low heat, then a steady boil in a large pan until a little spoonful dropped on a freezing cold plate wrinkles when you push it. This is the ‘set test’ - if it doesn’t wrinkle, keep it bubbling for another 5 minutes then try again.
Blackcurrants surely benefit more than any other British summer fruit from cooking; there is something almost foxy about the fruit on the bushes, yet subjected to heat and some sugar, the flavour and aroma is magical, as is that most imperial of colours. I don’t quite have the heart for marrow and ginger jam yet, but it may only be matter of time.
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