5. THE WRITING GARDEN
The shed at the end of the Writing
Garden was built by my son when he was 12. It is set in a small self-contained area created by hawthorn hedges. This area had five apple trees and a mown path curving gently through long grass to the door of the shed.
Every May this grass was overtaken by cow parsley and, combined with the blossom of the apple trees, it was as good as anything that my own horticultural efforts could conjure. I put a table and chair in the shed and began to use it to write in
(right) – hence its name ‘The
Writing Shed’.
However, once the cow parsley and apple blossom was finished, it became a hedged-in little corner of scruffy orchard. The magic was lost. So in the winter of 2012-13 we lifted the turf and started planting to try to sustain that May-time magic. In effect, the garden is now one big border with a brick path through it following the line of the grass path. All the plants in it are white.
White gardens have been popular for the last 70 years. But they are not easy to get right, because white is one of the more difficult colours to use in a border. Too much white and it becomes blank, too little and it ceases to be white.
I started with snowdrops, then the lovely white daffodil ‘Thalia’, followed by Ammi majus, which exactly hits the cow parsley-tone I want. There are foxgloves, sweet peas, alliums, lupins, buddleia, philadelphus, hydrangeas and roses.
I found I was using the Writing Shed less and less so now, from September to June, it contains trays of picked apples that I collect almost daily to take back to the house.
The new edition of The Complete Gardener by Monty Don is published on 4 March by DK, €37.80 .
© Monty Don 2003, 2009, 2021.