The garden to the east of the milking barn is now moving into its ninth autumn. Nine years of evolution and getting to know and becoming its own thing. The plant lists that I made in the first year to record what appeared in each bed are invaluable for jogging the memory to see what has thrived and what has dwindled and what has been entirely lost to competition. The overwhelm of the Sanguisorba ‘Cangshan Cranberry’ that, for the first three years, provided the stature and height to the blank canvas, but then became too dominant. The shifting balance as the Euphorbia wallichiana began to seed. A welcome new order and unplanned for new partnerships as they sprang up unexpectedly amongst the persicaria. And then a sure but certain dominance as the seedlings bulked and began to erase their companions. 

It takes three years for a perennial planting to properly mingle and to express its own version of what you had in your mind. Five for the shrubs and seven to ten for the trees to assert themselves. Firstly with volume and structure, then latterly with shade and the change that shade demands in terms of companions. A planting is constantly shifting, and this is one of the pleasures in nurturing it through one incarnation and into another. The layering and intermingling becoming more complex and rightly so, like a conversation that deepens through trust and time and knowledge.