About

About this blog

Created mainly as a record of what has been planted where and when in my garden, and what each plant needs to grow well. I tried keeping all the tags that came with the plants, or started notebooks or computer text files, but none of those methods really worked for me. Here, I can also add photos and maybe even receive comments and tips from others who are growing the same plants. 

It is also a journal of my inner and outer landscape as I can't really separate my garden from the wider surrounding landscape, nor my inner responses to any of it.  Nature therapy can be anything including walking in the countryside, designing a sanctuary garden or sacred space outdoors, tuning in to the energies and nature spirits of the land and garden, intuitive gardening, and using plants for therapeutic purposes such as herb baths or flower essences.  

About my garden

I have just a narrow strip of land up a hillside behind my cottage and a tiny patch in front. 

Located in the south west of England just outside of Dartmoor, it is a milder but wetter part of the country.  The soil is very stony, with lots of slate and has a neutral pH.

Being on higher ground I get great views from the garden over the small market town, which is in a river valley, and can also see the green hills on the horizon where Dartmoor begins on even higher ground.

Over 100 years ago this area of land where my garden is situated was cleared of woodland to grow early fruit for the London market, which is why the brambles and wild strawberries have gained such a foothold.  All the gardens on this level tend to quickly turn wild if not tended to constantly, and some neighbours have given up and let it do just that.  I have such a wild garden to the east of mine.  On the west side the neighbours have many trees which tend to block much of the afternoon sun from my garden.  Spring is the time I like best in my garden, before the trees form their canopy of leaves high above.

There are many stone walls, some of them crumbling or collapsed, with gaps in the boundary walls which are only about 3ft high, so there is no feeling of privacy when others are outside, but at least none of the gardens are overlooked by the windows of houses.  The short boundary walls and fences give these narrow plots a more expansive feel, like they are part of the natural landscape.  Tall fences would just feel out of place and claustrophobic.

Because it is on a steep slope, the garden has been terraced (not by me).  I could see the potential of having a different type of garden on each level.  The first part, which I call 'the terrace' is extremely narrow yet is the best place for full sun.  There is a raised bed there which I want to make into a gravel garden and rockery.  If the dry stone retaining wall behind it falls down any more the rockery will end up being totally natural, although this is not my plan.


Up some crumbling stone steps there is the next level where there is a small lawn, flower bed and shed (which obscures the best views), the next section being the deck area under the shade of next doors' sycamore tree, then a small summer house with a sloping bed in front, and behind that is the area I call the woodland garden as there are too many trees for the space and where nothing much grows, so far, because the ground is rock hard.  

About Me

I consider myself to be a novice gardener, even though my interest in gardening goes back to childhood days, when I was given my own little flower bed to tend.  I used to swap plants with the girl next door who was the same age as me, until my family stopped me digging up plants from all over the garden.  I must have been under four years old (as my grandfather was still alive) when I fell in the large rectangular garden pond he had just made.  I have no memory of this, but it was promptly turned into a flower bed soon after, and I've wanted my own pond ever since.  My earliest gardening memory was when helping my grandfather spray some gooseberry bushes at the end of the garden, and having the nozzle pointed in the wrong direction I gave my eyes a good spraying instead.  It wasn't all mishaps though, and my favourite job was repainting the few garden gnomes, who would all get different coloured jackets and hats each year.


A few years later I found a book on rose pruning lying around the house, which I read a bit of and then practised my pruning skills on all the many roses we had around the garden.  It probably wasn't the right time of year to prune, but it was the first gardening skill I learned. 


Apart from co-owning my own garden at age 18 for a few years, I spent most of my adult life renting and without a garden of my own.  I did start a horticulture course but had no garden to practise on, so I did a bit of volunteer gardening for the National Trust.  Neither lasted as long as I'd hoped due to travel distance problems amongst other things, but at least I had dabbled and read books.  So when I was in a position to have a garden of my own again I just wasn't interested in a low maintenance or courtyard garden.  I can now understand their appeal, for I had underestimated the amount of work involved here, but still see that vision in my mind of how my garden could look over time.  
I have recently joined the local gardening club too, which meets once a month, and enjoy growing things from seed indoors over the winter months.  My main interest is in ornamentals rather than vegetables.