Garden view
Helen Billiald finds that making garden progress is fraught with complications
Making progress is hard, says Helen Billiald. Especially when one job just leads to another “Perhaps my own blind enthusiasm is partly to blame”
Have you ever noticed how even the simplest gardening jobs can expand to occupy weeks and weeks? Each new task you take on is like flicking over the first piece in a domino cascade, and you never quite know where it’s going to take you. All my horticultural projects have two timescales. There’s the Planned Timescale where you pop on your rose-tinted spectacles and pretend you’re working in a vacuum, thinking ‘Oh this’ll only take an hour’ and the Actual Timescale – one that reflects the idiosyncrasies of your garden, the weather, work, pets, passions, distractions, family crises, friends that pop in and everything else that impinges on productive time in the garden. For example, I’m levelling a patch of ground ready for my new greenhouse. This requires lifting turves, a bit of shovelling, raking and treading down, which could all be done in a day. But then reality kicks in.
Heavy stones
You see, the site is currently occupied by a heap of heavy stones that need moving to a new home under the outstretched branches of my neighbour’s leylandii hedge. But there are some old compost heaps under the hedge that I’ll have to move first, in order to make space for the stones. I duly began digging out the compost, removing fence posts, unclipping chicken wire and carting the partly decomposed greenery to my new compost heaps elsewhere. But in the process of excavating the old compost heaps I discovered an enormous wasp’s nest. Deciding this would make the perfect ‘show and share’ topic for my daughter to take to school, I spent an absolute age carefully digging it out. It was large enough to fill a plastic recycling crate and was a playground sensation. Suffice to say, thus far I’ve spent two days on this particular project and not a jot of greenhouse levelling or indeed stone moving has been accomplished. Another recent example concerns two wisteria I bought 18 months ago. One went straight in, the second, destined for the other end of the wall, is still in its pot. Unfortunately I needed to clear a patch of vinca before planting it – which I reckoned I’d have done in a week or so. However, the vinca has reappeared for the fourth time, positively glowing with rude good health in spite of my best efforts to get rid of it. The pot-bound wisteria is faring less well. Even my anticipated two days of early December hedge cutting went awry. I sallied forth to give everything a light clipping over, only to decide to halve the hedge’s height so I could clip it from ground level in future (not wobbly-ladder level). So, out came the pruning saw and ratchet loppers... Four weeks and a very big bonfire later and the job was finally done. Perhaps my own blind enthusiasm is partly to blame. In the time it has taken me to write this column I’ve realised that the greenhouse would look far better sitting in the middle of a wildflower meadow rather than rough old lawn, so I’ve ordered 500g of Special Pollen and Nectar Meadow Mix Seeds online and now I have a whopping great patch of grass to convert into a suitable seedbed by next month. I’ll keep you posted...
Helen Billiald is a garden writer with a PhD in Ecology and an MSc in Pest Management. She’s currently attending a time management course