Pages

Friday 10 August 2012

And it's only been sunny for a day and a half

I know a lot of people love the gardens of stately homes. Many find ideas and make plans for their own gardens whilst exploring the well-tended borders. I tend to wander round them, rolling my eyes. They're not my world.

But the other week we dropped in to Chatsworth - a place for which we still have a great deal of affection - to wander round the gardens on a sunny day. And it was in the sensory garden where I saw a plant that stopped me in my tracks.


You might recognise it, or even have it in your garden. I know I have. It's a gardenius forkus, and it grows where work has started in a garden and then stopped. Just as in my garden, it grew in Chatsworth next to a half-buried plastic trug containing a handful of weeds.

It is the single most inspiring thing I have ever seen in the garden of a stately home. Manicured lawns, weed-free beds, plants untouched by a single slug - you can keep them. What I can manage is a half-finished task; abandoned because of rain or idleness or a child coming home from lunch with its grandmother. When you hear someone saying, 'My garden has got a bit out of hand,' I take it to a whole new level. For example, today I trimmed my overgrown flowerbeds with an electric hedgecutter.

So here's to imperfection in the garden - to weeds, to rot, to perennials so wild you have to push them out of the way at shoulder level whilst walking down the path. Here's to bamboo pushing up your coping stones; to a dead frog under a tarpaulin. Here's to nature in all its insanity.


16 comments:

  1. Now that's a look I can achieve! (The gardenius forkus is my speciality)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Amen- preach,sister,preach! And bring those electric things over here pronto!

    ReplyDelete
  3. We were at a National Trust garden recently and saw the same thing - but they had gone one step further and removed the tines of the fork before permanently planting the handle. I'm not quite sure that's the right spirit ...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh yes, with you all the way on this. I can't get into my patch until it has started to die down, it is taller than I am.

    ReplyDelete
  5. [smile]

    (Back to my weed-covered allotment with its slow worms, sneakily hidden mudpies - splat - and surprise courgettes.)

    ReplyDelete
  6. slug free gardens always make me profoundly suspicious........

    ReplyDelete
  7. I hadn't thought of the hedge cutter - I just despair of the 4ft weeds and try to spend as little time out in the garden as possible - it just feels like yet more tidying up and housework!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I have one of those forks. I am just not sure where it is any more due to the length of the grass.............

    ReplyDelete
  9. So I am not the only one who controls the garden chaos with power tools? Hallelujah.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I just baulk at the number of man (woman) hours needed to keep those immaculate gardens so perfect. Our 'lawn' is currently a bit of a wild flower meadow, more clover, moss and dandelions than actual grass. I'd love to think I could keep it all in check, but I'm mindful of the fact that I barely have time to brush my own hair in the mornings, never mind spend several hours a day gardening. Plus, I like the gone-wild look. That's my excuse anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I'm laughing at your post! :)

    I have a similar but different permanent feature in my garden, possibly called Bucketus abandonus. It consists of a bucket with a few old weeds in it, filled to the brim with about 4 weeks of rainwater. Smells divine...when I can find it.........

    ReplyDelete
  12. Oh come into my garden do - you would love it, and next year it is going to be full of thistles - they have all just landed, fairylike and threatening.

    Pomona x

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hmm, have to disagree with you here. My garden is tidy - I love it because I like plants (too much) but also I love the way that if you tidy a garden it stays tidy at least for a while. Unlike a house, or at any rate a house in which one does anything at all.

    I do also love Chatsworth though it makes me feel a bit sad to think of it because I went there just before Christmas with my beloved Daughter 2 when she was at Sheffield Uni. And I was missing her so much. And now she lives in London with her penniless actor husband and I miss her even more. Ah well.

    ReplyDelete
  14. See, I am such a non-gardener that I admire you whole-heartedly for getting as far as planting your gardenius forkus. Such zeal and application! Bravo!!

    ReplyDelete
  15. 'Gardenius Forkus' sounds like the name of a character from the Asterix books.
    I have done zero gardening this year - the terracotta pots in the back yard are full of the dried up remains of last year's plants and/or weeds and, to make matters worse, the cat has taken to using one of the pots as a litter tray. Youngest brought a broad bean plant home from nursery that is now taller than I am, so it hasn't been a complete disaster I suppose!

    ReplyDelete

I love comments. I always try to respond - either here in the commentbox or by email if Blogger gives me your email address.

Thanks for visiting!