New from old
Autumn light is low and golden. Everything looks beautiful in September and October. I will miss the yellow lime leaves and the tall topiary pillars ( which we first saw at this time of year. But the same light will fall on our new place further west, at the far end of the Cotswold hills. I will grow more dahlias all summer until the frosts start to bite and plant my favourite Rosa x odorata ‘Mutabilis’ and plenty of phlox in the shade. I may even find a spot for the flaming Euonymus alatus ( and possibly even create another huge hen, from box, or yew at the top of the garden to hide the useful corner that will hold a new hot compost bin and the log pile. I have always loved the Polystichum setiferum ( growing beneath the limes and have already chosen a shady corner of the courtyard outside the new house’s kitchen where a piece of the best, ‘Pulcherrimum Bevis’, will be happy, and another corner to plant the October-flowering snowdrop Galanthus reginae-olgae. A greenhouse is already ordered for the geraniums now sitting on a sunny windowsill, as well as for the half-hardies, begonias and sowing seed.
“Oh you will miss all this,” visitors to the Old Rectory have been saying all summer. Unhelpfully. And they’re right I will. At first at least. But making a new garden is exciting and although I’m sure some of the old enemies, such as ivy and bindweed, are lying in wait, I know the new soil is marvellous. When that famous pair of Sissinghurst head gardeners, Pamela Schwerdt and Sibylle Kreutzberger, retired to a small Cotswold garden, they waited a year before planting anything for fear of noxious weeds. Received wisdom also advises waiting in a new place to see what comes up. I may not be so patient. I will, of course, miss this garden, but gardening at the new house will be much easier and fun, I hope, in a totally different way.