Garden log: Early August

Spring is approaching and it feels a little make or break. Our first year in this place, a first run at the seasons, and so many things will reveal themselves in the next little bundle of weeks.

I’m so keenly aware of my cluelessness, of having a stab rather than following some coherent plan or system of deep, lifelong knowledge. But it’s better to try and fail I suppose. And who knows, there might be a few wins in there too.

The pace is about to pick up ... there’s a generosity in winter: a slowing of the cycle, a time to plan, and define, a time to set things in readiness. But soon the sap will be rising. The possibilities will expand, there will be a hurry of growth and truths will become evident.

Still, winter has been a busy time. There is a circle of fruit trees to the front of the house now where there used to be a tangled scrub of unhappy shrubs, and half dead blackwood, all of it set in a lush bed of oxalis. One arborist, several tip runs and a fair bit of weed spray later we’ve planted a loose circle of a quince, a plum, an apricot, a peach, a pear, a nashi all of them hooked to watering and waiting for things to come. We’ll sow a flowering meadow between and around them, with a row of blueberries to the top of the block. A happy little statement of hope. Some will fail no doubt. Some might flourish; all gestures of possibility.

Out back the biggest thing in recent weeks has been building a serious blackbutt deck to fill what was a sloping space under a large timber pergoda. It’s come up well, thanks in no small part to the beauty of the wood. This was a project that tested the envelope of whatever carpentry genes are shared by my son and I, but, with much head scratching and deep thought we gave it a crack.

Again I’m struck by the power of structure to define space. I keep coming back to this in my thinking on this garden. I feel a need to segment, to create smaller environments that I can reason with, rather than stretch my imagination to a complete picture of the whole. I know this is not the way to do it.

In my other (ABC working) life I talk with real garden designers and I know that someone like Paul Bangay would stand in this space and conjure a more total vision, a thing that he would commit to paper as a first step. He’s talked me through that process more than once, but it feels so many miles beyond what I could either conceive of or achieve. I just haven’t got the imaginative power or botanic vocabulary.

To draw an idea for a garden first needs the flash of inspiration, drawn from experience and knowing, to create a sense of the finished whole, but then knowledge of exactly how various plants will flesh and inhabit that vision. I’m just not there. I just don’t have the knowledge or experience.

So. I will bumble on, creating smaller, defined and connected microcosms, aided by interleaving structures, hoping that eventually a coherent whole, or a logical series of connections will emerge. It’s a little like sketching I guess: light lines moulding themselves toward a shape.

I haven’t rushed to do all that much, after an initial flurry around a central bed that hopefully will fill out in the warmer weather to a lush study in leaf shape and texture, all of it making heroes of a Japanese maple, two dogwoods and a beautiful arcing spray of philadelphus. No rush, but a lot of walking, standing and looking; trying to get a sense of what’s needed or might work. The challenge is to think a little more expansively I think. To have the nerve to be bolder.

In the vege bit, things are taking a better shape. Two big beds are full of carrots, various broccolis, broadbeans, kale, leeks, spring onions, beetroot and chard. There’s a big bed of garlic with newly attached irrigation as of last weekend (above). A small square of bushing peas and beside them a large bed with eight asparagus crowns waiting on their first season. I’ve given up on one of the other vege beds, defeated by constant oxalis among the lettuces. Scorched earth for that one. I’ve rescued what I can, then sprayed the whole thing with enough glyphosate to kill a cox plate field. I’ll rebuild the soil in a week or two and start again. More intensity in there I think ... I planted seeds at the weekend that will make a first little leafy greens forest, one that might grow weed free. Lesson: hand weeding oxalis is a mug’s game.

The trick now is to begin some better spring and summer planning ... and there’s not much time to lose.

I’m looking forward to that moment in a few years’ time when the pattern of the seasons is more familiar, when I’ll just know what’s next rather than constantly wonder. Soon.