Walter realized that it would be some time before the climbers would make an effect on the bare walls, so one day, without telling me, he bought a collection of stuffed heads and mounted horns at a London sale room. Very soon heads, antlers and horns sprouted from every available wall, inside and out. The malthouse received the most imposing pieces from the collection, and very soon our house wasn’t known as ‘the one with the lovely blue clematis on the front’ but as ‘the house with all the heads on the outbuildings’. In a community largely composed of retired army people this display was definitely surprising, if not a little shocking. One adorned one’s house with one’s own trophies but it was rather unusual to buy them by the gross. Walter used to chuckle about his heads and was delighted when he could tell an enquirer that he had bought them and not shot them himself! Read the rest of this entry »

We were surrounded by high walls and nothing was growing on any of them. The three-storey malthouse and the cowhouse, being strictly utilitarian, were starkly bare, nothinggrew on the high wall along the road except tufts of arabis and an odd wallflower or two, and Walter was very anxious to clothe the end of the house where the old stones were too decayed to be repaired and the surface had been covered with stucco.

He sent me to the local nursery for ampelopsis by the dozen, we bought roses, pyracantha, cotoneaster and clematis. My sister gave us a Ceanothus Veitchianus for the front of the house, which was a sheet of blue in a very few years. Read the rest of this entry »

We made a mistake with our first hedge in not cutting it down more drastically. We were so anxious for it to grow high enough to hide that disgraceful back door that it wasn’t trimmed properly for a long time, merely cut level. The consequence is that it did not grow thick at the bottom. After twelve years it was nearly four feet wide at the top but only a foot in width at the roots. Though we kept it well clipped the nature of the plant is not equal to the strain of supporting so much flesh. It waved about in the wind, quivering like a jelly, and when there was no wind the line was floppy and undulating. To bring it back it had to be cut down to two feet in height, and cut back so that the top is slightly narrower than the base, and it will continue to be trimmed in this tapering fashion. Read the rest of this entry »

After clothing the walls, Walter turned his attention to hedges. We had our high wall on one side and we wanted something equally high and impenetrable on the other side and along a low wall beyond the house on the south side. Our thoughts turned to Cupressus macrocarpa. We were warned that it had a limited life, in fact, just when we were considering our hedge the local doctor showed us a magnificent hedge he had planted at the back of his tennis court the year his son was born. That year his son was thirteen and the hedge was beginning to die. Of course we did not heed and we planted macrocarpa along the road beyond the house and between ourselves and the next house. The hedge flourished. It was well clipped every August and gave us no trouble. But in 1951, thirteen years after it was planted I noticed several of the trees were dying. Our hedge hasn’t made such a wholesale job of it as the doctor’s did but I have two nasty gaps where four or five trees had to be dug out. Now I have started a new hedge of Lonicera nitida behind so that I shan’t have to wait too long for a screen after the rest of the macrocarpa die. Read the rest of this entry »

When it came to staking I came to grief badly. In the first place I did not stake early enough, and quite a lot of handsome heads of flowers were condemned by my mentor because they were crooked by the time I did tie them up. Nothing will straighten a plant that has grown crooked. And when I did stake I was accused of doing it too loosely. My idea was to allow the plants to grow as naturally as I could so I put a few sticks at the outside of each clump and tied string— not too tightly—to the sticks. I admit it wasn’t satisfactory because the wind blew the flowers about mercilessly in my little enclosures and they got tangled and bent. I was warned that I must be more drastic but took no heed. So Walter taught me a lesson. Read the rest of this entry »

The stones had to remain as they were for several months, a monument to my ignorance, but one happy day a cousin with a genius for gardening visited us and remade the gardens for me. Although there is a distinct downward slope towards the gate he placed the stones to give the effect of level strata of outcrop, something I could never have dreamed of and have never ceased to admire. From the house the effect is a luxurious display of rock plants growing out of the wall.

I had very few real rock plants to begin with, and those that I had were very small, so the first season I kept up a succession of colourful effects with annuals. I do not know whether the soil was particularly good or as a beginner I took more trouble and followed instructions implicitly, or perhaps I was just lucky. Certainly I have never again grown such superlative Phlox Drummondii, dwarf antirrhinums, mignonette, zinnias, clarkia, godetia and candytuft, to mention only a few. For once, and once only, I achieved displays that really looked like the pictures on the packet, and I thought that it was all just too easy. Read the rest of this entry »

The garden that went with the house was divided at the back into two tiny gardens, with walls and small plots of grass. We supposed that these went back to the time when the house had been two cottages.

In addition to the walls dividing the two little gardens at the back another wall divided us from the barton, and beneath all these walls someone had amused himself by making banks and sticking in stones vertically, like almonds on a trifle. We imagined the idea was a nice ready-made rock garden for us to play with. The first thing we did, when we really set our minds to the garden, was to remove all the walls and stones and pile them up for future use. They were quite a problem, those piles of stones, as they were moved from place to place as we dealt with the ground where they were piled. I could not see how we should ever use them all. Read the rest of this entry »

Walter always did the mixing and superintended the operation while the boy of the moment wielded the cans. It always seemed to me that they waited for a windy day for this job, and I had many anxious moments as wisps of poison spray were blown on my precious plants growing in the walls on each side of the path. In the end I took over the job myself and picked my own day.

My quarrel with gravel paths is that they require far more attention than most of us can possibly give under present day conditions. To keep them hard they must be rolled thoroughly very regularly, and once having achieved a modicum of perfection the proud owner is on constant tenterhooks that something will happen to spoil them. Walter used to get very worried if visitors drove the wrong way round our drive. One side was steep and it needed quite a lot of acceleration to get up and round the grass knoll in the middle of the drive. Read the rest of this entry »

When it came to the job of making paths I discovered that this was a subject on which Walter had very strong views, and I had many lectures on how to achieve perfection. He felt that there was nothing to beat a good gravel path, and a good gravel path was so hard that nothing would spoil the surface and weeds would find no foothold.

Turning the barton into a well-made drive, big enough to take a dozen cars, was a big operation. We were lucky in being spared the problem of drainage. There is a big slope from the malthouse to the gate—as friends have discovered when they have not braked their cars properly!

The first thing we had to do was to level the surface, and then dig out the foundation. A good foundation is the secret of a good drive, we had it and there has never been any trouble since. I often wish we had taken as much trouble with our lawn as we did with the drive. Read the rest of this entry »

I went through some dreadful times when I first started planting. In spite of all my efforts quite a lot of clay was left in the soil, and the harsh March winds whipped it into hard nodules which made the most uncomfortable homes for my newly planted creatures. I know better now and, though I have improved the soil immeasurably, I always use a mixture of sand and peat when planting, particularly with small things. Then I see that the roots are spread out and every little fibre has close contact with this good rooting material. Such treatment makes them feel snug and at home and they hardly know they have been unrooted from one place and transported to another. The worst thing you can do to a plant is to permit an air pocket anywhere near its roots, and this is what I am ashamed to say I did when I first began gardening. My planting was so insecure that the plants lurched about in the bed and were blown this way and that by the wind. Like a woman holding on to her hat they were too busy trying to keep a foothold in the earth to give a thought to anything else. Firm planting is one of the first essentials, and it is a good idea to give a little tug to anything that is just put in to make sure it is firmly anchored. I always test my cuttings in the same way, though not quite so vigorously. Read the rest of this entry »

I learnt a great deal from Walter that first year of gardening. The first thing I learnt was that he knew a great deal more about the subject than I thought he did. I was a complete novice, and I thought that he was too. I knew he had had gardens and gardeners, but I assumed that being very busy he had left all the planning and work to them. I may say I got very tired of one particular gardener during that first year. He was quoted at me morning, noon and night until I came to hate his name. Everything he did was perfect, he never neglected anything and he always did all the jobs that needed doing at the right time. It was no good for me to tell Walter that I had to sandwich my gardening between housekeeping, household jobs and a certain amount of social life. In his opinion there was no excuse for not getting things done at the right time. Read the rest of this entry »

After the seed is sown it must be raked well so that it is covered with earth, and then the surface has to be firmed again. After that we require gentle rain but, if it is not forthcoming, artificial watering must take its place, using a spray or a fine rose. The idea is to have the seed as closely embraced by damp earth as possible so that when germination takes place there are no air pockets to discourage the tiny thrusting roots. Birds sometimes enjoy a meal of grass seed, so it is really safest to cotton the ground after sowing.Once a lawn is made it really should not require a lot of attention if it is cut regularly. To keep it in good condition a light dressing of _granulated peat mixed with a little bonemeal and dried blood should b_e given in the winter. If there are weeds a selective weed-killer is used at the end of March, and in April a dressing of lawn sand will encourage new growth. Moss can be removed by raking and if rolling is done a spiked roller should be used to aerate the soil. Rolling with an ordinary roller does more harm than good, particularly with very heavy soils. The use of a lawn mower regularly gives it all the

rolling it needs. Read the rest of this entry »

And so our lawn was taken right up to the high wall. I was grudgi_ngly allowed a narrow bed in which to plant a few perennials and the climbers that were to clothe the wall, but I was warned that it was not to encroach too much on the precious green grass.

We were lucky in having one tree in the garden, a variegated sycamore. That was the tree we saw through the open door the day we decided to buy the house, and today it is the only thing that remains in the garden from those days. It is in the lawn, rather near the house, and the aspect would be very bleak without it. It is one of the tragedies of a new garden that all the trees must necessarily be very small, and I think we were extremely lucky to find one ready grown for us. Read the rest of this entry »

Levelling the beds was the worst job of all. I knew enough to save the top soil and take away the clay underneath, but the problem was what to do with the stuff. I had heaps of good soil all over the place where I was working and the clay had to be wheeled right away and dumped somewhere in the lower garden. The only way to get it there was down a plank over the stone steps. It was cold and damp with mud everywhere and the wheelbarrow was always tipping itself over as my unskilful hands tried to balance it on the greasy plank.

Luckily it was a mild, if wet winter, and by the early spring I had done most of the work. It didn’t meet with approval and I admit it did look bleak. Every morning at breakfast I was greeted with ‘Stones, stones, stones!’ Or it might be a query ‘How is the floral quarry this morning?’ Walter’s bathroom overlooked that part of the garden and as he liked to dawdle over his bath and shaving he had ample opportunity to gaze with horror on what I had done the day before. Read the rest of this entry »

While the lawn and drive were being made I had to work as a labourer with Walter and the garden boy, but when they were finished I was at last permitted to go off and amuse myself in what was to be my part of the garden, the flower beds. I had long been considering what should be done with the ground on the west of the house. This was on a higher level than the rest and sloped up to a small orchard. We were lucky that our garden was on different levels. A garden that is completely flat is difficult to make interesting. We all know gardens that start as a field and finish as a field, no matter what the owners do in the way of trouble and expense. The kindest thing fate can do to you is to give you a garden that slopes away from the house. The upward slope is more difficult to deal with as great care has to be taken that it does not become top heavy.

When we bought the house this part of the garden rose sharply to the orchard without path or form. The speculator who sold the house to us had put in a few miserable gooseberry bushes, but they were choked with couch grass. In fact, it was nothing but a wilderness and looked the most uninspiring material for a garden. Read the rest of this entry »

As a lot of the goodness must seep into the ground from my compost heaps I have had the bottom of the compost enclosure concreted. Instead of having the ground quite level it slopes down very slightly, and along the lower side I have about a foot of vertical concrete (breeze blocks in fact). My compost enclosures are at the top of a ditch, so it has been easy for me to run out three small drains into the ditch. The rich ooze from the heaps drains into receptacles placed to receive it and gives me a constant supply of liquid manure. It is wonderful what a fillip this diluted goo water gives to a plant that is just coming into flower. In the summer the sweet corn particularly is the lucky recipient of this largesse. Read the rest of this entry »

All this time we were doing our best to improve our terrible clay. We had endless bonfires and Walter tried so hard to get me to take the ash for the garden before rain had had a chance to wash some of its goodness into the soil. I wouldn’t admit the necessity. There was always something else more important I wanted to do and it was often a week before I trundled it off to my flower beds. Now, of course, I am as fervent a disciple as Walter ever was. All the wood ash from my open fires is shared among the plants that particularly like potash, magnolias and irises particularly, and I give some to the raspberries, and in the winter the apple trees get their share. When I grew potatoes and tomatoes they, too, were lucky. To distribute it evenly throughout the rest of the garden I now incorporate it in my compost. Read the rest of this entry »

In addition to roses and clematis Walter had a deep passion for dahlias, the bigger, the brighter and the fleshier the better.

He bought a large collection from an expert almost as soon as we bought the house, and the first summer they enjoyed a secluded season in front of the hedge that separated us from the next house. There was no other place then in which to grow them, and I thought it was an admirable permanent home for them, a position all to themselves, with a hedge as background. but Walter felt they were being slighted by being put in the background and when I came to plant my terraced garden I was told to leave plenty of large spaces for the dahlias. Read the rest of this entry »

Irises should be trimmed after they have finished flowering. Some people seem to think that this is a mistake. The experts agree that the right procedure is to cut the leaves to about six inches after flowering. Later on there will be dead outer leaves to be pulled off so that no dead vegetation lies about on the ground to harbour slugs and snails and other creatures.

Iris stylosa needs drastic grooming. Not only should the foliage be drastically trimmed after flowering but all the brown leaves should be pulled out. I get no pleasure from seeing the flowers peering at me through a tangle of dead leaves, like an old man’s blue eyes twinkling through eyebrows as thick as thatch. Iris stylosa gets very thick, and very untidy, if it is happy. Read the rest of this entry »

Walter had one garden adage he was always quoting at me: ‘It is nice to take a walk in the garden and better still if you take a hoe with you.’ I think a pair of secateurs would be my choice.

How often one sees odd bits of dead wood, suckers and overhanging branches as well as deadheads on one’s morning amble. That timely snip saves a lot of time and trouble, and one can collect a few flowers for the house at the same time.

Deadheading is a most important part of gardening. It isn’t only from the point of tidiness that one should remove spent flowers. A plant will go on flowering over much longer periods if every dead bloom is removed at once. Read the rest of this entry »