Can you believe it has been a whole year since Ma Yogini’s first garden post. And a year since I left my day job to work completely self-employed? Doesn’t time fly? Anywhere here is the final instalment – and you can catch up on all the previous garden posts here!
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This has been a strange summer in the garden. Plants I thought well established have suddenly died, including the Dorothy Perkins rose and the lovely Acer (just a side note – the rose was dug up by Brother Yogini’s dog…just saying – R). Both were doing well but evidently decided they could stand this dull, windy summer no longer and took themselves off to flower heaven. A border of Busy Lizzies plants which usually last until the end of September and into October have died down seemingly overnight. I will replace them with winter pansies and hope for the best. On the other hand some plants have flourished as never before. Against the trellis an everlasting pea and a blue clematis have flourished beautifully, their combined colours giving pleasure to us and visiting friends for weeks. Tomatoes and runner beans are plentiful, but the tomatoes are green. More chutney (groan).
Gardens have unexpected failures and successes often in equal measure – much like life really, so keep with the successes and pleasures!
A Luffendic Stede or lovely place
Any garden which is not completely neglected represents an attempt to create beauty in some measure however small and even those which are completely overgrown contain the traces of what was once a lovely place. Many of these are large gardens which represented ambition and wealth and which proved difficult to sustain in hard times, but they can be resurrected as for example the so-called ‘Lost’ Gardens of Heligon in Cornwall. The ancient gardens of Egypt, Persia and Mesopotamia, which we know from tomb paintings and the remains of monuments, were created as early as 1400 or 1500 BC. They were wonderful areas of fertility in a desert landscape supporting figs, dates, vines and citrus. They always, naturally, had a good supply of water without which no garden can exist (yes, I know about dry gardens and gravel gardens but generally gardens like water) and over the years water in European gardens has been manipulated into canals, streams, pools, waterfalls and fountains to be both utilitarian and to create a cool and calm environments for pleasure and quiet contemplation. The Muslim gardens of Spain similarly combined the usefulness of fruits and herbs with beauty and religious significance so that gardens were holy places – a concept neglected these days but nevertheless inherent in the idea of creating a garden as a private, intimate space and the cooling, calming influence of water has nearly always had an important role.
Gardening came a bit later to the English. After the Romans went home to warmer climes it was left to monks to sustain such gardens as existed. In 995 Aelfric, Abbott of Eynsham, wrote a book which was intended as a Latin- Anglo-Saxon vocabulary but which not only contained the phrase luffendic stede (which I love) but also contained a list of the names of about 200 vegetables, herbs and flowers which were commonly grown at the time and this is the first written indication we have of the existence of gardens (wyrtttun) and the plants which grew therein during the Dark Ages. Compared with what we have at our disposal today 200 plants are quite limiting but Aelfric thought his garden was a ‘lovely place’.
Since Aelfric and the simple monastic gardens where fruits, flowers and vegetables grew happily together, we have seen many a gardening fashion come and go. Vegetables were banished to special areas away from the pleasure gardens and the flower beds; plants newly imported from abroad were often given pride of place (the history of Exploration and Empire building can be traced through the history of plants); lakes were dug and mature trees moved to create a particular vista but always the ambition was to create a lovely place. I do not believe that a gardener ever took a spade to soil to deliberately create a mess! So, I have tried to make my own ‘luffendic stede’ with varying degrees of success but that is part of the quest for the lovely place and next year will bring new challenges.
This is the last episode in the series but before I sign off I would like to share some other lovely places where it has been my privilege to sit, walk, think or read.
This is the restored nuns’ garden at St Valery-sur-Somme, France. They grew medicinal herbs for their
hospital and although the nuns are gone there is still a small local hospital on the site.
A magical place in the winter garden at Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire.
Just behind the Abbey is this lovely stretch of water – Quy Lode
Spring flowers in the urban garden. Flowers have always been an important element in the garden
but modern garden designers are playing with more architectural ideas of which I am afraid I do not
have any examples. But….
The back yard of a holiday cottage on the Suffolk coast has been treated differently. The golden apoxy resin on
the ground and the pale terracotta walls create an illusion of sunshine even on a dull day which
reflects back into the kitchen. The bench faces east to catch any morning sun and provides a pleasant
place to relax or read without any planting.
