“…a bit of snow to add its almost-forgotten charm to the garden.”
With its new seaside plants, bee borders and a visit from a nightjar, Adrian Thomas’s Sussex garden has flourished during the pandemic
Adrian Thomas reports on progress at his own wildlife sanctuary,
ONE OF THE THINGS I get asked time and again is, “Have you finished that garden yet?” or indeed the rather more pointed, “Haven’t you finished that garden yet?”
Of course, we all know that no garden is ever complete, but at the same time I’m certainly aiming for a point where all the structural elements are in place – lawns, paths, beds, ponds, tree planting etc. I had planned it would take seven years to transform my acre from its original abandoned chaos, but here I am at the end of six and I know I’ll run over into the eighth before I reach that goal. But, hey, as long as you have fun along the way, it doesn’t matter one jot!
During lockdown, I thought working from home might give me more time to make progress, but suddenly the whole nation seemed to be interested in the wildlife they were finding in their gardens. I found myself called on to do media interview after media interview on top of the day job, and even had to film myself for Countryfile. ➤
Yes, my garden became honorary ‘countryside’ as I talked about all the glorious birdsong we could hear in the absence of traffic and aeroplane noise!
Such was the public interest that some 16,000 people followed a six week wildlifefriendly gardening course that I recorded here for the RSPB, looking at everything from making a bee hotel to sowing annual seeds and taking cuttings. For all the awful news, fear and frustration caused by Covid-19, this renewed appreciation of gardens has surely been one of the silver linings.
Seaside at home
Each year I like to create one new area from scratch, and this year it was the turn of the (grandly named) Seaside Garden. I dug out this bed to a depth of about 45cm
(18in), half-filled it with hardcore, positioned an old boat that I’d dug up elsewhere in the garden (you heard me correctly!), then topped it all off with a thick layer of pure sand.
Into this I’ve sown wildflower seeds collected from some favourite coastal haunts. There are Welsh poppies
(Meconopsis cambrica) and sea campion
(Silene uniflora) from Norfolk; wild fennel and sea radish (Raphanus raphanistrum) from the Isles of Scilly; thrift (Armeria maritima – seeding itself with abandon); and sea holly (Eryngium maritima). Yes, the area needs to mature and the plants establish, but already it’s full of living memories of happy times at the beach.
In fact, this year has had a ‘seedy’ feel to it. Until now, I’ve limited the number of new plants I’ve added while I focus on the structural work, but now I’m beginning to indulge in what, for me, is one of gardening’s greatest pleasures: to buy packets of seed for a couple of quid and conjure up some incredible plants out of bare soil. It’s nigh-on magical.
This year I’ve grown some old favourites such as tithonia (Mexican sunflower), whose bright orange blooms enliven the autumn borders. However, I’m especially pleased with new delights such as Leonurus
sibiricus (Siberian motherwort), which germinated and flowered within a season. Its slender stems and seedheads will create quite an impression in winter, once it clumps up next year.
I’ll also be fascinated to see what Dipsacus inermis (Himalayan teasel) looks like once it flowers next year. Will it attract the goldfinches like our biennial native teasel? I’ll find out!
If you’re not into seed sowing, pluck up the courage to give it a whirl and you might surprise yourself! I’ve managed to germinate horseshoe vetch – the caterpillar foodplant of two rare blue butterflies that live on the downs near me and I have a little stand of Serbian spruce seedlings doing very well.
Bees’ needs
Other parts of the garden are beginning to look after themselves. I love it when plants get their feet down and clearly let you know that they love your garden and its conditions. For example, my Bee Borders are only one- and twoyears old respectively. In their first year, they needed a fair bit of weeding, but by the second, as the plants filled out, only a bit of light tinkering was required. I’ll add more colour in due course, but for now they’re at least full of plants working hard for my bees and butterflies.
Meanwhile, greater stitchwort (Stellaria holostea) is settling into my woodland area. This native woodlander produces a mass of small white star flowers that seem to hover above its delicate foliage. From just two small plants they’re now spreading along either side of the path. I intend to weave in some wild aquilegia grown from seed I collected in a local woodland.
So, although my dreams of breaking the back of my bigger garden jobs was not to become reality this year, I don’t mind at all. As a place to unwind, with robins singing next to me, bees moving straight into my new bee hotel, and a thousand flowers beaming their delight, the garden delivered everything I needed. How lucky we are to have our gardens as an escape, a sanctuary, in these testing times! ✿