This is me in my garden. I consider it my science project - I had never even owned a house plant until I moved here. I like making things and this has to be the biggest thing I've ever built.
Actually, I was given a house plant when I moved in. I called it my Tamagotchi plant as it was a challenge to keep the thing alive. A challenge I ultimately failed.
The plan was to have a wild garden, with wild flowers and an informal layout, with only a few traditional garden plants. The "wild" part seems to have been achieved, although "overgrown" and "out of control" are perhaps words other people would have chosen. Sometimes I need to take the shears with me when I want to walk round, to create a Robert-shaped gap in the vegetation.
Most of my wild flowers come from packets of mixed seed. I ignore the instructions saying to plant them direct into the ground, and grow them indoors. I tried the approved method the first year and found that weeds already present in the soil outnumbered the plants, then found myself pulling out individual weeds one at a time, hoping I wasn't killing a plant by mistake. For your information, nettles can sting even when they're tiny.
Mind you, sometimes it's interesting to leave a patch of ground unplanted and see just what comes up. Mostly it's just weeds, but if there's anything worth keeping you can transplant it.
I have grown several different types of poppy, including an unusual wild one which was growing here when I arrived. It has orange petals and grey-green leaves. I'm particularly keen on Verbascums. Again, there was one growing here already. I didn't know what it was at first, nervously looking up plant books to identify the thing as it grew bigger and bigger. (They can get to 3 metres tall, and I've clocked them growing at almost half a metre a week. I exaggerate not.)
The picture below left shows Verbascums and Poppies.
The third picture above shows what is possibly the world's first gooseberry hedge. What happened was I needed to plant a new hedge, and transplanted some saplings which had been growing underneath the existing hedge, which is mostly Beech and Hawthorn. The plants I took to be Hawthorns turned out not to be. The berries are delicious though.
Having said that, the gooseberries seem to disappear shortly after they ripen. Books say that birds don't eat gooseberries, but my local birds don't read books. I reckon it's either them, or rare South American Tree-Climbing Rabbits...
Shown below is Mr B, one of the local blackbirds and a suspected berry thief. He and the missus have four children; Emma, Mel, and the twins Howie and Jazzie. Also pictured are some of the starlings who make nests in the roof of my garage. Do they show me any gratitude? Indeed they do not, dear reader. In fact, they're more likely to shout personal abuse if they see me in the garden, even if I'm nowhere near their nests.
The first picture above shows a Euphorbia, given to me as a present. You have to be careful with Euphorbias, as the sap is highly alkaline and can cause burns if you get it on your skin. It's also toxic to any animal which might try to eat it, not necessarily a bad thing.
The second photograph, sadly not very clear, is of my orphan tree. I call it that because I found it at the front door as a baby. It was about a centimetre tall then; now it's more like 4m. It's some sort of conifer.
The next two pictures show my Maple, Crimson King, and a Birch which I rescued from the rascally rabbits. It has a kink just above ground level as a result of them biting its head off when it was little. I'm not very fond of rabbits.
Things I've seen in my garden
Rabbits, mice, shrews, frogs / toads - not sure of the difference
Ferret, dragonfly, hedgehog and pheasant (all one time only)
A sheep
A sheep dog
Owls, bats, goshawks, squirrels
Rabbits
I was kind of hoping I could get one of the frogs to turn into a beautiful princess, but they always escape before I can catch 'em.
There's evidence that moles and foxes have been in the garden although I've not actually seen them. I did once spy a fox in the field across the road from my house. The cows were chasing it.
This is Amy - she's a moon child, gathering the flowers in my garden. She doesn't say much, on account of being made of concrete.
It's now almost twenty years since I moved to this house and started work on the garden. Before I arrived, the previous owners had only planted some of the garden. The rest was derelict - I believe that other houses and buildings had once been on the site, and often come across the remains of what appear to be foundations when I'm digging.
The left hand picture below shows what it was like when I moved in, although it was the middle of winter at the time. Lots of plants sprouted up later, but in the part you can see here most of them were weeds.
Some people might not find my garden to their liking. The casual visitor might think it's full of weeds, but in fact almost every plant is something I planted myself or a descendant of one. The main problem is with Ground Elder, but I'm not prepared to use weedkiller. Anyway, Ground Elder is generally resistant to weedkiller though it's struggling in the war with my plants - it's survival of the fittest in my garden.
Anyway, it's my garden and I like it the way it is.
Postscript
In October 2015 I moved to a new home and recorded a video of my garden for posterity - click on the play button above to watch it. I'll be starting afresh, so there may be a new page on this web site in the future...
