One step at a time Thanks to some resourceful recycling Frank is rediscovering the outer reaches of his Californian garden
Much of Frank’s Californian garden is lost to a vertiginous slope, but now he is slowly starting to reclaim the edges thanks to some resourceful recycling
Aslope, beyond a certain angle, begins to lose charm, from a gardening point of view. You might still be able to plant into it, and make something picturesque, but when you have to grab hold of branches to avoid teetering backwards during maintenance, and if the slope is lowest and steepest at the boundary, so that there is nowhere comfortable from where to stand and admire your picture, then the land is as good as useless except, perhaps, as somewhere to plant climbers that are best admired from above.
The Californian garden, although three times the size of the English one, is nearly two thirds wasted in this way. To begin with there was enough to do in the flatter regions for us not to have to think about it. We trimmed what trees there were to frame the good parts of the view and conceal the bad and, otherwise, the precipices were left on the long finger. The great urgency was to remove an expanse of pink concrete that blighted the front, and that, by accident, was what led to the terracing.
In England we would only have had to leave the piles of rubble at the gate and, within hours, farmers would have descended with front loaders to take it away and fill their muddy gateways. Here, one or two people expressed interest, but no one appeared and the nasty pile grew until it began to impede the turning of delivery vans, which took retribution in their avoidance by backing into shrubs.
Then I returned from a spell in England to discover that Miles had taken the initiative, and not only was the intruding pile much smaller, but the most immediately annoying slope had been made into a terrace, with the pink concrete of the wall facing, invisibly, away from us. From then on the recycling of concrete became his project. More terraces appeared, and the last of the paving was taken up in neat rectangles of five foot by three, to be formed into steps from one to the other. There have been no attempts to plant them – the good drainage they afford being the last thing a plant would want in this climate. They are topped with crushed granite and used to enjoy the plants that are put about them.
I have a tendency to think only of plants, and when structures occur to me they are there to serve plants. I will delve for dampness and raise for drying, but would never think of changing the shape of the landscape for the sake of improvement. In fact, I tease friends who are in the land-forming business about the vanity of their trade. Most human intervention does not make for beautiful scenery but, now that I think of it, terracing might be a noble exception.
There is something touching about small fields impossibly high on a mountain, cut just level enough for a bred animal to stand and graze, or paddy fields, or tiny walled vineyards. Something reassuring too that they can only go so far and that ultimately the slope wins and the mountain exults over them. The terrace might show our ingenuity in adapting the environment to us, but it also shows where the border of our cleverness lies and, in a slightly pathetic way, how desperate we are to claw what we can. Perhaps not so noble; merely aesthetically acceptable.
But, in the garden, we don’t have to reflect in quite such an existential way. Terracing could be no more than a good solution to getting about without having to reinforce the seat of your pants. The pink concrete was soon spent and there is plenty more slope that never gets ventured on. It would be nice to think that, one day, it could all be levelled and stepped to become a meandering descent and climb, from which one could come back with baskets of fruit picked at elbow level. If we were that desperate to get the most from every inch.
One day, it could all become a meandering descent, from which one could come back with baskets of fruit picked at elbow level