USING PEAT IS ECO-VANDALISM

Around 95 per cent of British peat bogs have been lost in the past 100 years. None will return in our lifetime – if ever. This is ecovandalism on a grand scale and is entirely unnecessary. There are excellent alternative growing mediums that make peat redundant. Every time you use a peat-based compost, you are deliberately participating in the destruction of a non-renewable environment that sustains some of our most beautiful plant and animal life. No garden on this earth is worth that.

The current Herb Garden is the result of the most dramatic forced change to the whole garden. This area was a stony yard when we arrived covered in 1.8m-high nettles. It is backed by the hop kilns to the south and a path runs north into the Cottage Garden and down to the Damp Garden. Another path crosses this, and is the main route from the house into the garden. We pass through the Herb Garden scores of times a day so it is much more than just a place where we grow herbs.

For many years this space was occupied by 64 clipped box balls. I loved the repeated simplicity and the evergreen rhythm that ran through the seasons. But disaster struck in the shape of box blight, so in 2017 we dug them all up and burned them. For a day the empty space was desolate but it then became an exciting new opportunity.

I planted 18 Irish yews to re-create the grid and repeated rhythm of evergreen plants, but on a vertical framework rather than a low horizontal one. The planting holes of the box have been filled with poor, gritty soil for Mediterranean herbs like thyme, oregano and sage, and I planted pleached limes to separate this new area from the herb beds near the house. Given the chance I would have my (healthy) 64 box boulders back. But nothing in gardening ever stays the same.

Monty in his fragrant Herb Garden

BEFORE