Last year, in the latest chapter of making the garden, we completed the walls that made it possible to continue the planting of the area above the Sand Garden. First a drystone wall on the upper level and inclined into the old bank, replaced a stockproof fence we had installed not long after arriving here to protect the broken hedge above it. We’d repaired and replanted the hedge as one of the first tasks, removing tangled bramble and failing elder, replacing with indigenous shrubs and trees and letting it grow out to provide shelter. The field above now sits in its shadow, and bats now have a flight run where the insects collect in the still of the leeward side. Common spotted orchids have colonised in the damp and cool that remains there throughout summer and so our influence as gardeners shifts from one side of the wall to the other, managing the land for indigenous diversity.

The sunny side of the new wall harvests the sunshine and the bank below it, reclined like a deckchair, makes the most of the sun as it falls onto its flanks for the duration of the day. The bank has the weight of the hill behind it and the soil is a deep, rich loam and riddled with winter springs. These make the slopes too wet, too steep and too heavy to walk over in winter, but in summer the springs dry up and drain fast, so fast that cracks wide enough to put your fingers down remind you of their split persona. We held the base of this bank with a seating wall that was poured just over a year ago and runs the length of the track to the barns. The track is a breathing space between the Sand Garden and the bank, but in my mind’s eye, I always saw the two as one.