As regular readers and friends will know, earlier this year
we moved to Hove. When we looked round the flat, one of the things that we
really liked about it was the garden. The borders were pretty over-grown, but the
garden was a good size and looked like it would get a lot of sun. It was quite
a contrast to the garden we had in our London terrace, which was narrow, ran up
a hill and was overshadowed by trees in the neighbouring gardens. The Hove
garden clearly had a lot of potential, but it was also going to be something of
a project.
We moved in in January, and spent the first few weeks
surrounded by boxes and painting equipment (I’m never sure why one feels the
urge to embark on major decorating projects as soon as one moves into a new
house). Our thoughts soon turned to the garden. Our rough plan was to create
something of a walled kitchen garden, with a flower border at the back,
vegetable beds along a south facing wall and some lawn in the middle to sit on.
We were also keen on planting an asparagus bed, and thought we’d throw in a few
fruit trees for good measure.
Our first step was to take out a large conifer that was and
several smaller shrubs. We got a reasonable quote from Geoff at Sussex Tree
Works, but the bad news was that being in a conservation area, we needed the
council’s permission to take out the conifer. Six weeks later, having gained
the council’s permission, Geoff and his team came round, and armed with
chainsaws, a chipper and a root grinder, took down the tree and shrubs and
ground out their roots. The difference was amazing, the garden looked so much
larger. In fact with the conifer gone we could see neighbouring houses that we
hadn’t known had existed before.
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| The shrubs and trees cleared |
There was still much to be done. The garden is surrounded by
Victorian brick walls, but these were covered with ivy. The beds themselves
were full of weeds. By now it was March, and I could see ground elder emerging.
This pernicious weed, once established, can be a real pain to eradicate. The
only up-side is that it is edible, so we had an unexpected harvest before
dousing it in weedkiller.
My mum is a great gardener, and can weed faster than anyone
else I know. We enlisted her help and spent a couple of days ripping down ivy, and
digging up roots and weeds, stripping the garden down to its bare bones. It
looked pretty empty, but we were starting to get somewhere. Having stripped the
ivy off the walls, we realised that the pointing was in pretty bad condition.
My dad and I had a crack at repointing the wall, using a lime mortar as the
original Victorian builders would have down. I don’t think we’ll be giving the
Brighton brickies a run for their money, but it felt good to have repaired the
wall ourselves.
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| Ivy clearing... |
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| ... and weeding |
It is always interesting to see what wildlife a garden
attracts. In ours it was mostly starlings, sparrows and seagulls. With the
seagulls, we realised it was always the same pair that came into the garden, a
mother and a juvenile. We watched as the mother taught the juvenile important
life-skills, like how to imitate rain to catch worms by padding his feet up and
down on the lawn, collecting nesting material, and how to squark loudly, a lot. By
mid spring the juvenile was in adult plumage, and the mother seemed to have
moved on to pastures new, leaving the juvenile to fend for himself. The
juvenile seems fascinated by us, and has a tendency to follow us round the
garden watching what we are doing. I find him both alternately sinister and
endearing. No doubt he is just waiting for me to light a barbecue so he can
pinch a lamb chop.
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| The seagull |
In the meantime, I dug over some of the lawn, and planted
out a herb bed and an asparagus bed. As spring progressed, more weeds appeared.
We carried on digging them up, making endless trips to the tip, with the car full of bags of ivy and weeds.
Brighton and Hove council doesn’t do garden waste collections (the introduction
of which would get my vote – a point to note for any councillors out there). We
covered the worst areas of weeds in black plastic to check their growth. The
areas that weren’t so bad got dug over and cultivated.
We had been busy planting seeds into pots, and had windowsills and a
coldframe bulging with plants. By May, we were ready to start planting out. Runner
beans, artichokes, tomatoes, dahlias, a canna lily all went in the ground. Rows
of salad leaves, radishes, swedes and kohl rabi were sown. It was amazing how
having even a few beds planted seemed to pull the garden together. There is
still a lot to do, but it feels like we have made a good start.
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