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!

~~~~

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.

This month, in her penultimate chapter, Ma Yogini deals with every gardener’s nemisis – the weed.

~~~~

Valerian at Walmer, Kent

Weed:  a wild flower growing where it is not wanted especially among crops or garden plants.  (OED)

Hours have gone by, backaches been induced, fortunes spent on chemicals to rid our gardens of these naughty little invaders intent on taking over the ordered world of gardening.  Some of them are indeed vigorous nuisances.  Ground elder for example, pretty enough waving its creamy flower heads, is invasive, destructive in that it eventually will choke any tender vegetable within its reach, and very difficult to get rid of – the smallest bits of root left in the ground seem to multiply like dragons’ teeth.  When I was a child we knew it as Mother Die and would never pick it or indeed any other umbellifers, for fear of inducing instant maternal death. Why was this so, I wonder, since it is not poisonous and used to be used as a medicine against gout.  Possibly we were being discouraged from picking  lest other more toxic varieties came our way.  Other popular names tend rather to refer to the tenacity of its roots – Devil’s guts or Seven-toed Jack for example.  Getting it out is hard work!

Most gardeners like a tidy plot especially when growing vegetables, but we have to compromise between the amount of control we like to exercise and the amount of time and effort we can or are prepared to expend in achieving it.  The walled vegetable gardens of old were tended by a small army of gardeners who grew prime quality vegetables and cut flowers for the house in weed free ranks.  Private gardens like this hardly exist these days (though examples can be seen at several heritage properties) but they seem to remain a touchstone for amateur gardeners operating on a much smaller scale.  My father, who had little interest growing things he couldn’t eat, was very relaxed about weeds in the flower beds or even in the lawn but the vegetables had to grow unimpeded by these little horticultural thieves who came in the night and stole the nutrients from the cabbages.  His vegetables and soft fruits were plentiful and delicious but I have never quite mustered the determination and energy to continue his war against invaders.

Many contemporary amateur gardeners have developed a more accepting attitude to weeds and to the idea of wild areas providing not only a welcome break for the gardener who can leave the bit by the shed to look after itself, but also a small haven for our diminishing wildlife. This is part of a movement for cherishing our natural heritage of wildlife and flowers two landmarks of which movement would be Miriam Rothschild’s work in the 1970’s planting her meadows with such wildflowers as moon daisies,  poppies and orchids (she once produced a seed mix called ‘Farmer’s Nightmare’) and Chris Baines’ publication in 1986 of How to make a Wildlife Garden. In embracing this movement to recreate a past in which we were in closer touch with our natural environment, it should be remembered that the two most iconic features of this remembered past – the bluebell wood and the wildflower meadow – were the result of human management of the environment and control of nature.  Coppicing of woodland to produce wood for domestic purposes opened up areas of the woodland floor to light and allowed the bluebells to flourish while haymaking for animal fodder prevented close grazing until after the flowers had bloomed and shed their seeds ready for the following summer.  Even in the ‘wild’ meadow certain invaders would be unwelcome. Some you see are weeds and a nuisance and wild flowers are just a little bit different despite the OED and we are never very far away from the effects of human efforts to control.

The traffic between nature and the garden has not been by any means one way.  Many a garden plant has jumped the wall and gone native, ground elder being a case in point.  Originally introduced, probably by the Romans, as a pot plant (i.e. to go in the cooking pot to flavour whatever was cooking therein) it took very happily to colonising its new home.  Japanese knotweed and giant hogweed were both introduced as garden plants and are now most heartily wished back to whence they came.  However, horse chestnuts (sadly now themselves threatened by an invader), sycamores and buddlejas are all naturalisations to rejoice in and are possibly not thought of as introductions at all but part of our natural heritage. So I still don’t really know what a weed is and will not spend too many back-breaking hours rooting them out but will take pleasure in whatever is lovely wherever I find it.

This month Ma Yogini ventures into French gardens – over to her!

~~~~

…..and into France to look at some larger and very much more splendid gardens in contrasting styles and coming from somewhat different traditions of gardening from the traditional English  and very far removed from anything to be found in my own patch.  I was a member of a party on an organised trip to look at gardens in the area of the River Loire and we stayed at Angers, which is on the Maine and not the Loire at all, and were taken by coach to visit gardens in Abbeys, Chateaux and private houses so the range was quite wide.

The chateau at Angers was a fearsome structure built when castles were seriously defensive and never, as with many of the others, converted into an elegant palace. These very formal flower beds are planted in the now dry moat and are intended to be looked at from above where the pattern can be best appreciated.  This is a very traditional French style of garden design from the 17th century and was very influential throughout Europe at the time and during the following century.  Known as parterres en broderie because  the patterns they formed echoed patterns found in embroidery of the time, these beds, lined with clipped box and planted with only low growing flowers, were usually placed near to the back of the house where they could easily be seen from the windows and gazed upon without any elevated structures to hinder contemplation of their patterns.  These of course are modern plantings in the old style.

Further and much more elaborate examples can be found at Villandry.  Since its restoration to the original pattern Villandry has become one of the most well-known gardens in France and in particular for its vegetable garden where the elaborate parterres are planted entirely with vegetable and salad crops. Each year two complete plantings take place and about 40 species are used each year on a three year rotation.  Such a potager is designed for display as well as utility in contrast to the walled vegetable gardens of Victorian and Edwardian England where the vegetables – and their gardeners- were kept well out of sight.  Purely for display at Villandry are the four large parterres which make up the Garden of Love.  Box hedges and red flowers play with themes of different kinds of love and invite the viewer, standing on the belvedere or raised pathway, to consider true love, broken hearts, jealousy and betrayal.

Because the gardens had not yet been planted up these photos are taken from Wiki!

This geometric style of garden design is very controlled.  Not only are bushes and trees pruned to an extent that some may find unnatural and distorted, flower beds and water confined within strict parameters, but there is even an attempt to control the viewer’s thoughts as he walks (no wandering allowed here) the weed free gravel paths!  Rigorous symmetry on this scale requires constant attention; 52km of box hedge for example need to be pruned every summer and hand weeded because the box has fragile roots.  This is gardening on a grand scale.

Gardening for display of power or wealth or more probably both has always been the privilege of the very rich and its apotheosis can be found in the great gardens of Versailles or Het Loo. Even the English landscaped gardens of ‘Capability’ Brown in the 18^th century, for all their seeming artlessness, were the result of immense labour and available only to the very rich. But there is another way of gardening and another rhythm of life.

Somewhere near the beginning of this series I wrote about walled gardens and the quiet spaces they create and in the midst of all this grandeur I thought of those spaces and how necessary they are to human content.  We all have demons – of anger, bitterness or even the need to control – and while we need to acknowledge them we also need to let them go and pottering quietly in my little garden is my way of letting go.  The great gardens of France were astonishing and I am very glad to have seen them but I was quite happy to see my own little place again.

We all need our own cloister garden, our paradise to which we fallen people can return.  If we can foster such a place of light and beauty in our lives, then our demons will meet their match.

–Fr Christopher Jamison, Order of St Benedict.