The daunting depths of a garden
In her gardening series, Carly Thomas makes peace with a feisty stretch of Rahere.
There is a part of my garden I have been avoiding. But I didn’t realise it until I faced it. It looked at me accusingly while I stood feebly with trowel in hand wondering where on earth to start.
Where does one start when one faces a 20-metre stretch of luscious and voluptuous growth? Listen to me, for goodness sake, my language has gone all Jane
Eyre to match this daunting diva of a garden bed.
The hostas pointed their silvery perfectionist fingers at me, and the foxgloves looked down on me from their great and peachy heights, while the lovein-a-mist declared it is most definitely not in love with me.
I let out a sigh, which could also be described as a guttural groan, and got to work.
Five hours of weeding and atoning, cutting back and absolving. Five hours in the company of this well-bred corner of the garden is how long it took for me to understand exactly why I had left this section for so long.
It’s the bit that feels the most ancient. It is shady and impressive, with trees that are big, a lane that is wide and a long garden bed that is sweeping and mature. It feels old, it feels elegant, and I therefore feel somewhat out of my depth within its grand expanse.
This house and garden have a history that is not mine. We bought Rahere from a woman who had lived in the house and tended the garden for about 60 years. It was what she did every day and for the first year of owning Rahere, it was her legacy I looked after.
I didn’t move a single plant. Every bulb I accidentally unearthed I religiously put back in the same place and I ducked under branches I was too scared to prune.
I was gardening her space. I was caretaking, but not really shouldering the responsibility that this garden is now up to us.
But this year, I have gardened my way into it becoming my own. Rahere is the Thomas family’s garden now and, while I honour Nancy every time I put my hands in this beautiful Kiwitea soil, somewhere along the way, somehow, it has become ours. It’s huge and it’s frightening, but it is not impossible.
I have got there through hard graft, I expect, getting my hands in the dirt everyday and knowing the garden by touch and by sense, not just by sight.
The kids tear around, the tennis court gets used for everything but tennis and the towering conifer makes a supreme hut.
And I finally understand what is in front of me. I have made sense of what needs to be moved, what has become too big for its boots and where a path can be reinstated with a slightly altered journey.
And, ultimately, I am letting go of what was, so that what could, can be again.