The Education of a Gardener

Border decisions

 

 

Here's a photograph of our tiny, currently quasi-derelict border looking east- towards the scraggy conifer point. I've already got various thoughts. I like the idea of a contrast between a more formal, Draughtsman's Contract style of garden, and a more naturalistic- very English, Arts and Crafts garden in the William Robinson or Gertrude Jekyll manner. So, the clipped box topiary in the foreground is going to stay. The box plant at the end has to go (or at least will be re-potted), to be replaced by trellis, stretching across the end of the garden- the plan being, that it will square off that oh-so irritating point. But what to fill the area in-between? Currently, I'm thinking: marsh spurge (Euphorbia palustris), foxgloves and lillies. The colour scheme will be a subtle green, grey/silver, and pink/purple.

In my last post, I mentioned our angelica plant, a self-seeded thing left over from my last garden. I like angelica, in as much that it looks architectural and my god, attracts the bees. Trawling the net, I've discovered Purple Angelica (Angelica gigas). I think this will look fantastic in our small garden. Here's a photograph from the digging dog nursery:

 

 

The Tradescants and South Lambeth

 

 

 

 

I was fascinated to discover that the famous 17th century gardeners and collectors, the Tradescants, lived on a site incredibly close to our house; or to put it another way, we live just outside what would have been the grounds of their house, The Ark, on the South Lambeth Road. John Tredescant the Elder (pictured below) was Charles I's gardener. The Tradescants, apparently, were the first people to grow exotic fruits such as pineapples and nectarines in England. And it gets better. None other than Elias Ashmole, the alchemist, mystic and  antiquary lived next door in Turret House. Both The Ark and Turret House were demolished in 1881, to make way for new developments.

 

 

The diagram below (1880) shows Turret House at the bottom left and its extensive grounds of three acres or so. Our house is in a terrace built just outside the Tradescant's gardens. I'm (almost) growing plants on hallowed Tradescant soil.

 

I've spent the last two weeks or so clearing out the garden; hopefully we've got the builders coming in three weeks time to build steps, put down gravel and install trellis- but more of that in later posts. In the meantime, I'm thinking about planting. I want: hostas, old roses, lilies (love lilies), irises, ferns, foxgloves, ivy, Scotch thistle and topiary- lots of topiary. I sound like a spoilt American brat. I want. But there's the realisation that in such a small space, sparse selection is the way forward- or is it?  

We've already got a few much-loved plants left over from my previous garden in Battersea, both currently in terracotta pots: Angelica, and the Marsh Spurge (Euphorbia palustris). I like the creamy, naturalistic heads of Angelica; it reminds me of the cow parsley you see growing in the ditches of country lanes in early summer, and it's very architectural. The bees seem to love it too. I'm not sure what variety I've got. It's got rather large leaves- I seem to remember a variety with smaller, spikier leaves growing in a National Trust garden somewhere. Maybe this one would work better? It's also not especially happy in the pot (although I feed it regularly), and I suspect would be much better off planted directly into the border. I've got many decisions to take.

 

 

The Genius of the Place

 

A new blog; a new post: where to begin?  

I've always been interested in gardening- from as long as I can remember. My father, grand-mother and great grandfather are (and were) keen gardeners, but appreciation and knowledge are two separate things. I'm beginning to realise that I know very little.

I understand the difference between a perennial and a biennial; every midsummer, I make a pilgrimage to Hidcote Manor Gardens. I've tried to grow a few things from seed (with very mixed results). I watch the occasional gardening programme on television, but when it comes to the finer points of horticulture, I have to admit that I haven't got a clue; or at least, I'm more often or not in the dark. But being an optimist has its rewards: and I've got great things planned for our tiny London garden. Great things.

 

I think it was the 18th century landscape gardener, Lancelot "Capability" Brown who said "Consult the Genius of the Place"; I've subsequently discovered that this phrase was lifted from Alexander Pope.

We bought our London townhouse about two years ago, and up until now have done nothing with the garden, which we've more or less abandoned- having concentrated so far on restoring the interior of the house. We've got some inherited urns, a rusty Regency ironwork bench, and a pair of stone lions we bought for a song from a local auction house, but apart from digging up the previous owners' box plants and re-planting them in two of the urns, so far that's about it.

The house was built around 1870 (I like to call it American Civil War period) in the South Lambeth area of London. It's just south of the River Thames (relatively close to the Houses of Parliament), Vauxhall lies to the North (an urban sprawl of building sites, traffic gyratories, derelict warehouses and dodgy nightclubs, now ripe for re-generation).

The house is part of a typical London brick and stucco terrace- four stories high (including the basement), but because we're almost at the end of the street, our tiny "garden", really more of a back yard, is an awkward triangular, pointy shape. And I stress tiny: it's about seven metres long, by five-and-a-half metres wide. 

My heart sank when we first set eyes upon it. The previous owners had done their best to tidy it up by planting scented geraniums and some box (buxus sempervirens), but the disadvantages seemed to stack up with relative ease:  the yard is overooked by high buildings to the South and to the East. At breakfast it's sunny enough, but by the afternoon, we're in shade. And there's a strange thing going on with the levels, too- the barred kitchen windows look directly onto an ugly concrete wall, and there's a set of mean little steps going up to the main terrace, paved in a nasty concrete which is supposed to look like "York Stone". There's a silly, scraggy conifer in the corner (accentuating the dreaded point, like the bow of a ship), and two manky roses with bad cases of blackspot. There is some trellis, but it's rotten and falling to pieces.

 

Looking West: barred kitchen windows looking onto a concrete wall. I've dug up the previous owner's box plant, given it a haircut and repotted it in an Italian terracotta urn. Original Victorian shutters in desperate need of restoration. Lovely mid 19th century ironwork, currently covered in a gungy, thick black paint.

 

Looking East: nasty, scraggy conifer thing. Have no idea what it is. It has to go.