My garden makeover has stalled and it has taken me some time to figure out why. I can report that the transformation has, at least, begun. As regular readers know, I moved in late 2024 from Bakewell in Derbyshire to Kent, to a much smaller garden. I forced myself, at times with what can only be called extreme willpower, to wait a year to make changes. Actually “make changes” is a rather delicate way to put it because, in the end, it was a rip-out.
It’s a small garden, 10m by 5m at the front of the house, and there is no back garden. It is walled, which makes it sound like some sort of mini stately home garden, but the reality is somewhat different. The walls were a hotchpotch. If you start at the front door and travel round, they were: London brick, dark brown wood shingles, light brown wooden fence, render painted black, more dark brown shingles, a garage wall that was an indeterminate grey. It was a mess (technical term). It was hard to know where to look, and wherever your eye did alight, it felt wrong.
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The first thing to sort was the walls. I wasn’t going to change the house (obviously), but the rest had to be unified. My crazy wall situation may sound extreme but I go to lots of gardens that have similarly mismatched wall colours and surfaces. People just don’t see it when it’s their own but I couldn’t stop seeing it. I toyed briefly with a dark colour, as something like dark green can look dramatic and rather sophisticated. Dark colours can make a small garden look bigger, as the walls “disappear”. However, here there is a wisteria trailing along the top of the walls and it’s obvious where they are. Also, I found the black wall depressing. My antidepressant strategy was a grey-beige paint colour called “Muted Clay”. When done, suddenly the garden looked unified — and larger.
I shouldn’t be surprised by what was found when the transformation began but, oh my, when we took off the shingles from one wall, underneath was an almost illegally bright yellow. Wow, I thought, it’s like living in an egg yolk. There were other surprise discoveries.
The first was that the only water source was a hose that came from underneath the garage. How strange is that? A new tap was installed and the hose cut off. Another — that the lids of the meter boxes had blown off and my duct tape solution (my answer, along with WD-40, to everything) kept failing, leaving the meters open to the weather. Now I know that you can buy new covers on Amazon for £34.99 each.
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I found out that a secret shrub behind the hazel was so close to the garage it was virtually in the wall. It was a euonymus that had been cut back for years, as the trunk was thick. Classic situation: it’s easier to cut it back than get the stump out. An axe was deployed but I’m still not sure we got all of it.
Another surprise — the entire garden used to be a playground. I discovered this via a chance comment from someone who had lived nearby 50 years ago. This explained why the ground was so compacted. No wonder the lawn had been so scrappy.
All of that was a few months ago. I have been waiting until after the planting to write about it. But the only planting so far has been three trees which, as they are in the “playground”, required some serious digging and mulching. I have moved on from mulching to praying that they survive and, somehow, their roots will be able to get through the clay.
I normally love the process of planting, making lists and a design, and so on, but this time I kept finding excuses not to. It’s been two months and it’s getting ridiculous. Spring is coming, sooner rather than later. I have never suffered from writer’s block, but this seemed to be gardener’s block.
There is probably something else at play here though. I love the “dreaming” phase of a new garden, where ideas float in and out, and everything looks (in my mind) beautiful. The reality phase — finding and buying plants, sorting through the inevitable failures etc — is much more sobering. It’s a small garden. There’s no room for failure. Still, it’s time to get a grip.
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Reader’s tip on beating the squirrels
From Carol Whitehead: “I have planted tulip bulbs in deep planters at a depth of at least three times their size. I have a squirrel who lollops across my patio frequently. If I do nothing he digs for the bulbs. But this year I have overplanted the bulbs with winter-flowering viola plug plants and the squirrel hasn’t touched them. Perhaps their slight scent masks the bulb scent?
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