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.
There is a theory that if compost is made on a concrete base one will be deprived of the worms which would normally come up from the soil. I don’t know where the worms come from but my heap is always full of very lively, very pink worms, so I haven’t lost these busy little underground workers by working on a clean foundation.
By degrees the soil in the garden is becoming more workable. When we took the house there was only one little patch where the soil was fairly good, and I was told that at one time that end of the house had been a bakery and the baker used to throw out the ash from the faggots he burnt to heat his oven. There must have been plenty of charcoal as well as wood ash to make the soil almost normal, compared with that in the rest of the garden.
Walter used to make me envious by describing the wonderful soil of his garden at Sydenham. After years of working it was fine, rich and dark, and no plant could do anything but its best when invited to reside in it. I used to compare my yellow clay with the soil in gardens that had been gardens for many years, and I never knew why anything ever bloomed for me. They did, and I had surprising results right at the beginning before I became a fussy gardener and took too much trouble.
One of my sisters visiting us during that first summer and seeing flowers blooming in that barren waste airily dismissed the miracle with the remark ‘good soil and beginner’s luck’. The first statement was not true, although the second was. Undoubtedly there is goodness even in weeping clay, and one may get surprising results from virgin soil, but to go on getting them it is necessary to put in as much as is taken out.
That truism applies equally to the mental as well as the material outlook. Gardening is like everything else in life, you get out of it asmuch as you put in. No one can make a garden by buying a few packets of seeds or doing an afternoon’s weeding. You must love it and then your love will be repaid a thousand fold, as every gardenerknows.
I have always felt my family has been very forbearing towards me. Before I was married I didn’t do anything in the garden. Every weekend, when my sisters were navvying to make a garden round the little house we built, I sailed off on my bicycle to play golf. And I never stopped saying the most scathing things about gardeners, what fools they were always to be working and never enjoying their gardens, and what was the good of having a lovely garden if you never had time to sit in it and enjoy it? I shall never forget staying with cousins in Cheshire. It was what they call summer in Cheshire, distinctly chilly, and after Sunday lunch we donned our coats and repaired to the garden with books and deck chairs. Very soon I opened a drowsy eye to see my cousin stealing off to attack a distant flower bed with fork and vigour, and I thought she was slightly mad. I was the mad one. I know now that the real enjoyment is in working in one’s garden. It is very difficult for a gardener to sit with enjoyment seeing all round him jobs that want doing. I often wonder why some zealous gardening relation did not slay me with fork and spade in my unenlightened years.
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