Our Garden
Hello. I'm working on this page, which is why it's incomplete and has no pictures. Enjoy the read, and come back to see how I'm getting on with it! November, 2009. Which are beginning to appear! March 2010. And now it's August.Where is the year going?
Ken Ellis
The present...
So far, it's been an interesting year garden wise. The long cold spell was a nuisance, and we took our fair share of casualties, including a tree fern, and a collection of Eucomis plants that had unaccountably been left outside. Then of course, we had the long dry spell. Still, the plants have managed well, and we have celebrated their successes as they have struggled back into life and then bloomed. Every day has seen changes, and we have enjoyed seeing and gardening many old favourites. The Open Garden went well, and an account appears on this page. For a variety of reasons, we decided to holiday from home this year. One of these was to actually enjoy our own garden. I'm sure that many of you would say the same - that you spend ages getting the garden round, and then disappear somewhere else! Getting to grips with the new (ish) steam engine also had something to do with it! We have been particularly plea
sed with some of our efforts. The following photos show what we call our par terre, and our hot bed as they were earlier this year. As you can see. the lavender in the par terre did well. It's a variety called 'Blue Rider', and, yes, we will be selling it next year!
The picture on the right shows the hot bed, with the rose 'Guinea' from David Austin on the wall in the background. A nice place to sit with a glass of wine!
We're still planting our herbaceous border, and generally doing August type activities, enjoying watching the season begin to change.
How it all began...
For the first two years of our marriage, we'd lived in Totnes, Devon in a terrace at the back of the town. The back gardens were more like allotments, and we'd had plenty of good advice from the neighbours, as we took our first faltering steps into gardening our very first joint garden. Following our move to our present home in 1976, we began gardening in earnest. There are one or two photos of our early efforts, and when I find them, you shall see them.
The garden hadn't really been touched for several years, which meant that we had a big job sorting it. We found many interesting things and made many mistakes. Basically, the plot is rectangular, and had a path that ran round the rectangle. After some basic clearing of undergrowth, we began to work our way around the patch. We put vegetables on the outside, grass in the middle and plants at the top. We'd inherited four old fruit trees that separated off the top of the garden from the middle, a row of damson trees down one side, and a smallish ash tree on the other. More about him later. We enjoyed our garden, but as we rent the house, kept it reasonably simple. With the advent of young
children, the simple philosophy seemed sensible. We did though become resonably adept at growing vegetables, managing a degree of self sufficiency.
We jogged along quite nicely, with sandpits for the children, a small greenhouse for us, a wild area by request of our daughter, along with various bits of garden for the children. Again, we have photos of all this, and I'll put some on here in due course.
Well, children grow up, and things move on. We didn't move, and began to develop the garden. I blame that nice Mr Hamilton and his Gardeners' World programme myself. Around 1995, several things happened. Firstly, We saw the afformentioned Geoff Hamilton build his par terre. We decided that this seemed like a good thing, and set about deciding where to put one. We also decided that the rectangular path was boring, and had to go. We also
We really must sort that grass!
wanted to put in a pond, now that our own children had reached an age at which it would be reasonable to expect them not to fall in and drown!
The bed hiding the pond. The par terre. Our first achievement. It looks a bit different now!
The path was pulled up, the pond dug and various garden plots rearranged, with smaller vegetable plots and a smart par terre with its geometric beds. We fiddled about with it all for the next couple of years, extending a bed here, changing a bit there, as you do. Then another thing happened.
I like trains. I've always liked trains. I don't care if you think I'm sad, but I get a lot of entertainment out of messing about with models, trains that is. In a mag that I read, there was an advert. 'Special offer,' it said. a deal on a smart steam outline engine and two coaches. The gauge and scale may not mean anything to you, but they were big enough to go in the garden. My mind began to work...
February 1996 found us beginning to plan a couple more adventurous things. Firstly,I planned a railway route round the garden. We went to the shop and ended up buying a genuine steam engine and a load of other stuff, spending a damn sight more than had been planned. If you're interested, there's more about the train on this page.
I also had to build a patio. (Not hard; things find it difficult to fall off the floor.) A little tip here - we put ours where we thought we'd get the evening sun. We didn't because of the now large ash tree. we did, however, get the burning mid day sun! And, as the patio was a distance from the house, it wasn't very pracical for eating. I've modified it now,making it smaller. It's hidden behind the Alpine House, making a private and cool corner for an evening glass of wine. I also remembered to leave a gap for the advancing railway track!
Beginning in April, both were built (sort of) in time for the annual church barbeque in the July, and I was coming to terms with driving a steam engine. The upshot was that the garden took another leap forward. the vegetable patches went, their places being taken by shrubberies. A flower bed was enlarged, and the train ran through the lot, somehow. It still does, and no, it doesn't look hideous. The challenge was to keep it unobtrusive and for it to become part of the garden. Judge for yourself by looking at (this page)
We developed other areas in the garden to reflect our own interests. After about three rebuilds, we got the rockery and rill by the pond right. A tip - get about three times as much stone as you think you need. Then, go to the Peak District or somewhere, and have a look at how nature does a rocky outcrop. Then, study the plants and how they grow where they do. Well. after a bit of research, we like to think ours looks the part.
We put in what we called our Mediterranean Patch, using gravel and appropriate plants. I discovered hypertufa (What? a weak mix of cement, sand and peat that you can use to cover things with, and plant into.) and covered a couple of old sinks, filling them with alpines. My growing interest in alpine plants led me to building an auricula theatre. If you don't know these plants, they're wonderful. We sell bog standard ones for the garden, and have a few specialty ones. Let me sell you one. You'll be hooked! The Auricula theatre was cheap. The special alpine house wasn't, took a lot of thought to shoe horn into our garden, and is a thing of joy and delight. Sure, we lost a bit of patio, but we've got one by the back door.
Over the years, we've hosted church and school staff BBQs, and had a fair few people through to play with the trains. We've been genuinely surprised at the favourable comments from people about what we've done. To us, the garden is a place where we can create things, play with plants (and trains) and explore themes that we've either seen in nature or in other gardens. Several of our friends suggested that we joined the National Gardens Scheme, and opened the garden to the public. Ha ha.
We visited the Ely Open Gardens in 2003, and contacted the local coordinator. the result was a lot of furious activity, an attempt to look at the garden through other people's eyes, and a fair ampunt of trepidation as June 6th 2004 approached. The details of our Open Garden participation are on this page Let it be suffice to say here that we've thoroughly enjoyed sharing our garden with like minded people of all skill and interest levels, and helped raise money for charity to boot.
The ash tree.
This hooligan merits its own page. Our small tree grew into a forty odd foot monster. The roots started doing things to paths, the canopy shaded the whole garden as well as most of Chapel Street, and it began to destroy my railway shed. Nobody touches my trains. It had to go. With the agreement of our landlord, we arranged for its removal. this happened on November 24th 2008, and resulted in me having about ten tons of logs on the lawn, several areas of vegetation, and six months before the Open Garden to get it right. Certainly today, the garden is a different environment. Most of the plants like the light, and we're all getting used to the idea of life post ash, as it were. the only things that don't appreciate the new order, are a couple of depressed looking wood pigeons, who used to live up the thing.
Now that it's gone, we've put in a new greenhouse at the bottom of the garden, re designed the area around it, and edged most of the beds and borders with stone. The builders did some, and I did the rest, following the 'it's difficult for things to fall off the ground' theory. The par terre now has rope edging instead of the tanalised timber it had originally, and has taken the air of a bit of Victorian garden, complete with water feature, auricula border (of course) and rhubarb! The south facing wall behind it has a collection of fruit trees on it, including a peach and fig. The area that forms a sort of elongated triangle between the wall, par terre and railway is gravelled, to level an annoying fall, and seems to be developing into a sort of homage to Blakeney Point and the shingle banks of North Norfolk in its planting. Watch this space.
The lavender hedge that borders this patch, and the railway, is really responding to the increased light, and is flowering beautifully.
The Future
Earlier this year, 2010, I said that we were looking forward to a year of consolidation. Well, we are still consolidating. Ely Open Gardens are not going to happen as a joint thing next year, though you are still welcome to visit us by appointment. Contact us via this page. Because we've got the time, we intend to develop some areas of our patch, concentrating on the cottage garden at the top end, and the back wall at the other. We're hoping to develop the raised bed where That Tree once was, turning it into an ericaceious patch, with a variety of planting. We've planted a small, slow growing and terribly well behaved mountain ash tree to provide shade over it all.
Thanks for reading this. If you've enjoyed it, please let us know. If you've any suggestions for us, please do likewise.
Ken Ellis
August 2010