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Sally Nex

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Sally Nex

Monthly Archives: April 2013

Of triumph and tribulations

30 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by sallynex in design, landscaping

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bible garden, garden design, olives, school garden, Thyme seats, turf seats, woven willow

The other day, very quietly and without fuss, I triumphed.

The natty blue traffic cones aren’t part of the design (honest)

This is the Bible Garden, formerly a patch of scruffy grass outside the Key Stage One area with some wonky benches plonked on top, at my kids’ school. And it is, at long last, finished.

The school is a Church of England school, so they wanted a Bible Garden in which the plants reference passages in the Bible. It’s a popular concept in the States but less so here – in fact I struggled to find any in the UK.

The whole thing was made even more complicated by the fact that the site was in part shade, and most plants mentioned in the Bible are of course Middle Eastern – so very much sun-lovers. Added to which this is Somerset, so damp (and last year, even damper than usual) and I had to be pretty inventive with what I put in there.

biblegarden4

Playing fast and loose: an olive in the raised bed (Garden of Gethsemane and all that) is a risk in part shade, but it is sheltered. And that’s Mentha longifolia underneath.

There was already a brick-built hexagonal raised bed around 1.2m high, so I based the design around that and created two connected hexagons. The teachers wanted it to feel enclosed, but still open enough that they could see in: and they wanted turf seats, and some reeds (for Moses and his basket).

biblegarden5

Bay lollipops marching around the edges (must move that rubbish bin…)

We ended up edging the whole thing with a low box hedge, but punctuated with bay ‘lollipops’. I steered everyone away from turf seats – too rustic, too scruffy, too much maintenance – and towards raised seats with the tops planted with spreading Thymus serpyllum (I was going to have chamomile but it needs sun). Once small bottoms have sat on them often enough, they should make a lovely dense, fragrant mat.

biblegarden1

Raised bed seating planted with Thymus serpyllum

I’m still not quite sure about the practicalities: after all, it rains quite a lot here so those seats will be damp a lot of the time. But I have a plan B in my back pocket, to replace some of the thyme with small 30cm square paving slabs so the children can sit down but still be surrounded by herbs.

It looks a bit bare at the moment but last week I spent a happy hour or two seeding it with the wildflowers of the field: Agrostemma (corncockle), Nigella (love-in-a-mist) and, slightly incongruously, broad beans, the closest I could get to tares. Actually, I’ve had to interpret the Bible verses fairly loosely: in the back corner, for example, I’ve taken Job’s verse:

“If I have stolen the land I farm and taken it from its rightful owners, if I have eaten the food that grew there but let the farmers that grew it starve, then instead of wheat and barley may weeds and thistles grow.”

…and replaced the thistles with purple Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’ (loves damp, happy in part shade) and the wheat and barley with Hordeum jubatum, an annual grass sown pretty easily from seed and with suitably ear-like flowerheads. Should look lovely.

biblegarden3

I wasn’t too sure about the colour of those raised seats at first, but I’m warming – it sets off the daffs beautifully.

And the reeds? A pond was out of the question with small children about, so I’ve done a little bog garden in the corner lined with black plastic. In it I’ve buried a couple of ‘mini-ponds’ – basically plastic flower pots with the holes bunged up – for the real water lovers, Cyperus papyrus and Typha minima. Around them are little marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) – no Bible mention, just a bit of spring colour.

It’s been a lot of fun, incredibly frustrating (I was building this, on and very off, through the wettest summer, autumn and winter we’ve ever had) and absorbingly interesting: in all, quite the most challenging design I’ve ever done despite its diminutive size. The willow arches, made by a local Somerset willow weaver, have absolutely been the finishing touch, and I’m so pleased with the result. It’s being Officially Opened on Friday, too – I don’t think I’ve ever had anything of mine officially opened before. I hope there will be ribbons!

Of jungles and foxgloves

28 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by sallynex in my garden

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Tags

foxgloves, garden clearance, hollyhocks, jungles

I have been absent for some time, for which apologies: I have three small lambs to blame, one ewe and two rams, and for all their diminutive size they’ve been running me ragged for weeks. It’s all very well, this self-sufficiency lark, but it’s a bit time-consuming.

Now I’m into my mega shows work overload which hits every year around April time and lasts well into July. So I’m seeing if I can try shorter, and possibly more frequent posts: and since this is my own space, where I don’t have to worry about being too eloquent or profound, I’m going to write a little more about my own garden. The wonderful Helen once wrote a post about blogging for herself rather than her readers (I’d give you the link but I can’t find it I’m afraid: it was very thoughtful, like a lot of Helen’s posts).

That’s where I’m at. I need a gardening diary, one where I can record what I’m doing day-to-day, the getting my hands dirty bit of my life which I suspect nobody else is much interested in, but which I need to document. I do have a paper gardening diary, or rather notebook, but it’s rather full of plant lists and notes like ‘Medlars don’t like chalk!’ to make much sense as a record of what I’m doing in the garden at any particular point in time.

A bit rough and ready, but this is the bit I just cleared

Into the cleared area I’ve put some hollyhocks for height, sown from a big envelope of seed from the plants in my mother in law’s London front garden, some sweetpeas around the obelisk, and some foxgloves.

foxglove_illuminationpink

Foxglove ‘Illumination Pink’

This is going to be a year of foxgloves, I think. My garden doesn’t have enough foxgloves: in fact, it doesn’t have any which is odd given that it’s chalk and quite shady and woodland-y in lots of corners.

I’ve planted out my seed-raised ‘Suttons Apricot’ seedlings, though I think they might be slightly outdone by these Illumination Pink perennial foxgloves which I got as a freebie from Thompson & Morgan earlier this year. They’ve bulked up into spectacularly healthy plants (T&Ms doing, not mine, I fear). They’re Chelsea stars, having won Plant of the Year last year. I’m not sure about the ‘pink’ bit, but they’re supposed to flower for ages and last years.

jungle

The remaining jungle, still lurking at the back

 And here’s what’s behind: the uncleared bit of the jungle. The purple bits are an overgrown Rodgersia, can’t decide what to do about it, it’s a handsome plant but not at all the kind of thing I want here. I think I’ll move it across the path into the Tropical Edibles garden – it’s not edible, particularly, but it’s very tropical looking. The variegated leaf to the left is our holly which seems to be recovering OK from its semi-drowning last year; and on the right is a thicket of the accursed snowberry (Symphoricarpos) which is a stout and unyielding weed in these parts. Plus the obligatory brambles, arums and later, no doubt, bindweed. Just hope I can keep it at bay long enough for the foxgloves to flower.

 

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