A garden becomes more complex as it ages, with each successive season adjustments made of necessity or simply the way the garden wants to go. The layer upon layering is a push and pull conversation that deepens with what you find as the garden comes to life after its slumber. The successes and failures, the spontaneity of mingling that comes with self-seeding and one plant’s ability to assert itself over another’s.
We are now at the beginning of our eighth growing season after the garden was planted and it is good to now understand the rhythms and its needs. Over the last few years, and in response to the trees and the shrubs now having presence, I have been planting early spring ephemerals under their skirts. First flowering cardamine, galanthus, hellebores and narcissus that will light the garden early whilst we are still enjoying the remains of the last year in skeletons. Not having bulbs amongst the skeletons makes for easier cutting when they are finally felled. The bulbous additions have demanded we start the spring clearances in carefully choreographed moves to work freely whilst the bulbs are still below ground. As the winters get milder, these first clearances have shifted forwards to the last couple of weeks of December and I can see our actions will need to move forward again once the new sand garden starts to establish.
We begin by cutting the foliage back on the hellebores to clear the way for their early growth. The perennial honesty has a stay of execution until its silvery seedheads are ravaged by a storm and the epimediums are left for their burnished winter foliage. We part their leathery leaves on a weekly basis now to see how the knuckles of flower are advancing and cut the old leaves away whilst the growth is still below the level of the cut. The delicate sprays of flower can dance on their own and the new foliage and its delicate veining can be appreciated more easily against the clean sweep of bare soil. Good timing is everything. Leave it just one week too long and it is almost better to wait a year and let the flowers and new foliage push through the old.
With this year’s mild winter, we have moved the big cutback in the garden forward by a week to work ahead of the already moving perennials. There are peonies already more than shoots and the soft new growth of thalictrum that I’d expect to see in March and not the last week of February. The trigger to start this year was the early rise of the Leucojum aestivum which are already in flower amongst the biggest stand of sanguisorba. I have added them to cover for the nakedness after the cutback, but their presence requires we make a start or the leucojums will topple for being drawn up through last year’s growth. As time goes by I have broken my own rule of not planting bulbs beyond the skirts of the trees and shrubs on more than one occasion, with Camassia ‘Electra’ that are timed so perfectly with the Iris sibirica ‘Papillon’and the Tulipa ‘Oxford’ which pairs with the mahogany coloured Paeonia delavayi. Theses areas now need tip-toe treatment when clearing. The layering makes the garden more complex to look after, but it’s that much richer for the complexity.
We were aiming to try and complete the cutback by the end of February, but will push into the first week of March with the delay of the wet weather. A big push on one of the days is now an annual event and made that much more lively for pulling together a team of helpers. The many hands, the chatter and the feeling that things are moving swiftly makes light of the work and the considerable task of clearing the garden now that it is maturing. Working from boards to not compact the wet ground, last year’s growth is cut clean to the base with no snags left to catch your hands when weeding. A handful of the best skeletons like Glycyrrhiza yunnanensis and Panicum virgatum ‘Cloud Nine’ are left standing until the very last minute, but it is good now to see what is going on at ground level with the garden cut right back.
We sweep up the debris after the cut and appraise what went on in the beds last season after the growth had closed over and we rarely ventured in to tend. A rash of nettles that had seeded in from the hedge and are happily adapted to the shadows of summer growth immediately become visible. This year a wave of Wood Sage has seeded away from the original group and are happily living up to their name, now that the garden has developed a more shadowy microclimate. We weed as we go and I consider a series of changes to inject new and vital energy.
The adjustments that follow the cutback will happen swiftly this year to stay ahead of the warm season and to keep the balance where the companionship reeds recalibrating. The Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Blackfield’, that leafs up earlier than the Miscanthus sinensis ‘Dronning Ingrid’ planted through it, will be pulled back to give the grasses the light they need in the first half of summer. You can see now in this maturing garden that, despite the resilience of the miscanthus, they are vulnerable to faster-growing company. I will also punch some holes into the persicaria to add a new group of scarlet Lychnis chalcedonica. These I raised from seed and have been growing them on in my stock beds. Introducing new plants into an already maturing garden is more successful if you can move in a hefty clump that already has energy in its bones and can compete with established company.
When the edits are done and before the growth begins to race away in the middle of March, we will begin the mulching. We have decided to try and make the garden as circular as possible in resource use and not import mulch as we have done in the past. A bokashi heap of twenty of last year’s hay bales is underway to generate our own material for next year. Last year’s compost from the heap will be used on the lowest beds where the sun hits hardest and this year, whilst we wait for the bokashi heaps to mature, we are going to directly mulch with this year’s cuttings which are being put through the chipper on its mulch setting. The perennials are hearty enough now to take a roughly chipped mulch and my appetite for experimentation is piqued by wanting the garden to be as self-sufficient as it can be as it matures.
Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs: Huw Morgan
Published 24 February 2024
