Month: April 2020

Quiet. Still. Colours subdued yet sparkling in the slanting light. Silhouettes of bare trees against the pale winter sky. Wrapped in vibrant colours of autumn before going to sleep, branches dripping with brilliant berries – gradually devoured by birds themselves preparing for winter.

This winter was wet, very, very wet. And there were only a few days when it was very cold, cold enough for the frost to pick out the details of the garden.

Fallen leaves on the grass. Rosettes of small sedums and the first primroses of spring.

The wet months of February and March passed, and suddenly it was sunshine, warmth and the garden burst into life. The walls clothed with the purple of aubretia ready to welcome visitors which were prohibited to visit.

Reliable clumps of daffodils, which we had inherited, flowered yet again reliably, in the shelter against the old farmyard wall …

… and under the mature ash tree with grape hyacinths amongst the carpet of ubiquitous, gloriously sunny celandines. 

And beneath the low branches of shrubs dances clusters of pale forget‑me‑nots. The garden has awoken.

But not everything has been asleep through the winter. The garden isn’t really ours; we are just temporary residents. The real residents – the moles, the voles and the rabbits – continue to thrive, their presence throughout the winter only too apparent. They were here long before us, and I am trying to accept that I only share my garden with them.

The grass along the western side of the house just spread untidily onto the gravel path – it was an area that I had immediately wanted to improve and back in the hot summer of 2018 I had planted a lavender hedge along the southern part. But by the back door the grass sloped down to the path and as soon as we arrived, I envisaged building a drystone wall with steps up to the garden.

 

Over the past couple of years, as I removed grass to create flower beds, I would lay upturned turfs along this grass/gravel boundary to build up the raised bed which would be retained by the future wall. This made the area look even messier. A wall was certainly needed.

But this was going to be a big job and there was planting to be done, so it wasn’t until the beginning of 2020 that we ordered three tons of walling stone from the local sand and gravel merchant. We moved it – slowly – round to the back of the house, sorting it into different sizes.  It sat there for a couple of months, but then the coronavirus lockdown started, so being consigned to home and with a remarkably dry April, there could be no more excuses and wall building began.

Thirty years ago, I had built a drystone wall at my previous garden, so I knew what was involved: constructing a 3D jigsaw without a final illustration and possibly with the wrong pieces. The first couple of rows went up quickly, until I squashed a finger which delayed wall building for a few days, whilst my husband set about cementing in wide shallow steps up to the grass.

Slowly over a few days, I continued the wall, with stone selection getting trickier as the stone pile shrunk. After building the wall to retain the raised bed on the south side of the steps, I dug back into the grass where it was getting lower and curved the wall to form a small seating area. I incorporated a broken pot and created small pockets in the top of the low part of the wall, in which I planted a few small alpine plants garnered from other areas of the garden. A bench with a small homemade table completed this area. 

Part One of the wall was complete – Part Two, the north side of the steps would have to wait until other spring garden jobs had been completed.

A postscript:  soon after this part of the wall was finished, it became apparent that a mole had taken up residence in the raised bed. The little creature busied himself pushing up the plants and throwing up mounds of crumbly earth all over the bed, along the edge of the wall by the grass, even in the plant pot. I am doing my best to disrupt his runs, to persuade him that this isn’t a good place to live, but so far, he is reluctant to move elsewhere.