Carol Klein prepares for major changes in her garden
Blow Brexit, blow waiting for the weather to improve – the New Year will be a time for action
Gardens are little influenced by festivals and festivities. They carry on regardless of what their keepers may be doing, or not doing. This year my garden has had little help. There have been lots of days away from home filming for Gardeners’ World and the gamut of flower shows, and on top of that for two new Channel 5 gardening shows, one a garden design competition and the other a more leisurely affair where we go to visit four outstanding gardens in each season of the year. Our final filming days for the winter episodes will be in early February. Nobody is quite sure when these programmes will be transmitted but we’ll let you know as soon as we can!
Gardens, like life, don’t stand still. Everything changes – either getting better or deteriorating. Having been in this garden for more than 40 years now there are going to have to be some major changes.
Trees have grown and it’s not just a question of them getting a
‘All those disappearing plants, of which I’m reminded when I see them growing in someone else’s garden, are going to be re-introduced’
bit taller. Trees grow more and more rapidly! The beech trees, probably originally a farm hedge, that line our track are massive now. Some of them were undermined, literally, when our then neighbour brought in a digger to ‘get rid’ of undergrowth and, more importantly, the soil in which some of these trees were growing. Their branches reach out now across the track and they’re much taller, too.
This means that the beds facing them in the shed garden (I wrote about it last week) doesn’t get sun until well into the afternoon. All the perennials and grasses there are developing to starboard, all leaning over towards the west to try and access more light.
For spring-flowering bulbs – snowdrops, scillas and even erythroniums – that’s not too much of a problem; they flower before the canopy fills in overhead. Branches are bare and conditions are much the same as those they would experience in the wild, but once the beech leaves unfurl and expand, later flowerers, many of which are meadow plants such as astrantias, sanguisorbas and most of the grasses, used to full light all day, are beginning to struggle. We must make life a little easier and a lot brighter for them by taking back those overhanging branches.
In both the shed garden and other beds on the sunnier west side of the garden, there are many perennials that are going to benefit hugely from being divided, their old, woody centres discarded and new pieces replanted with lots of good compost. Later we’ll mulch.
There should be adequate material to mulch the whole garden; there’s no point stockpiling it and if we run out, we’ll just have to try and find a source of mushroom compost. Its slight alkalinity may be just what some of our mossy beds need. Here and there, you feel conditions may have become too acid and the soil a bit stagnant. This sort of weather makes you feel that everything stagnates, including my brain!
It’s time for a shake up. Blow Brexit, blow sitting around and waiting for the right weather. We’re going to get things moving. All those disappearing plants, of which I’m reminded when I see them growing in someone else’s garden, are going to be re-introduced.
The Christmas holiday here is going to be a time for reflection and then for planning. And New Year will be a time for action – more of that next week.