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Garden History |
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More than
forty years ago when we viewed Hazelwood Farm as potential purchasers, my
husband Dan’s first comment was, “Well it ticks a lot of boxes but it hasn’t
got a garden and what’s more, there isn’t anywhere to put a garden.” We both stared up at a limestone cliff
covered with impenetrable scrub; he wore a frown, and I a very large grin.
All my life I had been piling together rocks in the most unsuitable gardens,
this at last felt like the challenge I had been preparing for. The farm
was my opportunity to work from home, and be there for our two small boys,
then aged one and two and a half. The neglected boundary walls of the fields
were the first rock I had to deal with.
Add in equally crumbling house and farm buildings. A large mortgage and spiralling inflation
meant it was a very long time before I achieved any sort of bed of roses! There had
been some attempt at landscaping, or stock proofing, around the front of the
house, a three foot wall had been built in front of the cliff and endless
rubbish had been thrown in behind it, and a Chamaecyparis
planted on top. It is still with us on account of its shade value and, now
clad with ivy, is a great retreat for the birds. The area was under planted with Scilla
hispanica; I banished the pink and learned to live with the blue and white.
Such a shame when the wild ones grow in our woodland. A Picea abies was
growing a little higher up the bank and is now strewn with bird feeders
providing endless interest from our upstairs windows. Several native trees
were left as a ‘wild garden area’, this is now being developed into a spring
and shade garden, incorporating a dedicated Hepatica bed to display part of
my ‘National Collection’ more informatively, and accessed by a new flight of
steps. The wild Twayblade Orchids and violets will be carefully maintained. The focal
point in the garden was and still is a very statuesque Corsican Pine standing
at the highest point, which we were advised when we moved here was towards
the end of its life. I planted a Cedrus deodara
close by in the early years, which I hope will look suitably imposing as a
replacement when the sad day comes. Most of my
early landscaping projects have since been replaced. I demolished an outside
loo and its back to back pig sty which was blocking the light from Dan’s
study window, reusing the dressed stone to build a semicircular raised bed
and my first set of steps. The bed, which was at the foot of the cliff,
contained a lot of grey-green and silver plants. The dressed stone was again
reused to face an extension to the back of the house. Seventy tons of earth
was removed including the semicircular bed, revealing more natural rockery
and letting the foundations of the house breathe. Huge stones unearthed were
repositioned to make an angled and more gradually sloping path to the upper
levels. This is the only path a wheel barrow can be pushed up. The newly
flattened area was stone flagged to form a patio and a path around the side
of the house. A pond I dug out of the rock at the top of the cliff, with a
crow bar, was very successful for many years, until bigger and better ponds
stole the limelight. Next to our front gate I built a raised bed,
edged with stone and filled with farm manure, on top of the concrete base of
an old roof water collecting tank. This bed has provided me with a more
moisture retentive place in which to grow Filipendula and Primula japonica.
Another sunken but leaking tank against the wall of the barn adjoining the
house was planted with climbing roses, old fashioned roses, and under planted
with bulbs and Hepatica transsilvanica. Old roses
have always been great favourites of mine, and many of those planted in the
early years have set the style, and formed the framework of the original part
of the garden. Along with many Clematis and Kiwi fruits they have completely
covered some of the old farm buildings, albeit to the detriment of roofs,
gutters and anything else that stood in their path. Trees were also planted
to provide structure and colour: Amelanchier canadensis, Sorbus hupehensis var.obtusa, and
Sorbus latifolia croceocarpa (a bird sown specimen
I rescued from our wood) and a few Euonymus europaeus (a great favourite of
mine) and Cotoneaster ‘Cornubia’ loved by the birds. A lot of junipers, shrub
roses and pendulous flowering shrubs formed an attractive barrier along the
edge of the top of the cliff, which is vertical in some places. A large part
of the upper level had gradually been hacked, cut and strimmed
into a grass area – it would be pretentious to call it a lawn – with large
areas left long until the glorious wild flowers had seeded. At the far side
of the upper level against our boundary
wall there is the only significant depth of soil in the garden, about
a foot or eighteen inches, in a strip about three feet wide, allowing us to
plant with ease in front of the wall to form a mixed tree, shrub and
perennials border, recently widened. Our
favourite part of the early garden was the less steep continuation of the
cliff below the wall of a small paddock, all south west facing rock and
grikes, until it tailed off into our wood. A wonderful natural rock garden,
but rather too heavily grazed by rabbits, four warrens full in fact. First
Dutch elm disease and then heavy gales had opened up the thin tip of our wood
nearest the house creating opportunities!
The paddock was originally just scrub with two very old apple trees.
We attempted to use it as a kitchen garden and orchard for a few years but
lack of time forced us to abandon it to sheep and rabbits. In 2001 we
decided to go ahead with a long dreamed of project, to move the dry stone
walls and include more than half the paddock into the garden, leaving access
for sheep through the other half. A big digger arrived and spent days moving
walls and excavating a very big hole in the rock for a pond. It all looked
horrendous. Dan was quite sure we had made a huge mistake. The site for the
pond was chosen to use natural grikes in the rock to form a cascading rill to
a lower small pond. We got rather ‘bogged down’ in the technicalities of this
part and needed to call in an expert. He pointed out, ‘’ You should have had
Lake Windermere at the bottom and the tarn at the top.’’ There was
not room to reverse them, and the large top pond is everyone’s favourite
place to be. The walls were stabilised with concrete and lined with butyl
hidden by cobbles. We dig up huge quantities of cobbles here, deposited on
top of the limestone as the glaciers melted. The smaller pebble sized ones
were used on the path surrounding the pond. Endless hours were spent sorting
the different categories of stone for various purposes; it always looks so
much more in keeping if you use the materials to hand. The rill had to be pointed carefully, and
needs to be kept well sealed if the water is not to disappear through the
limestone. It is well worth the effort to maintain. The sound of running
water really brings the garden to life, and the ponds have remained healthy
and very popular with the wild life. My biggest
aim with the new garden was to let in the light. In fact it has become a
theatre of light, the rocky staging and the elevated position allows the
light to shimmer through my cliff top prairie from sun rise until sun set.
The earlier part of the garden is mostly shady. We have a back drop of
woodland around three sides, so I craved a complete contrast within. I was
also wary of losing the shape of the rocks with my enthusiasm for planting.
So much of our special limestone habitat in Silverdale has been lost to
woodland; I wanted this area to celebrate the plants which love it open,
sunny and well drained. There is a
ha-ha effect looking down into the field across the cliff from the seat
behind the pond. I originally achieved an instantly dramatic ‘architectural’
effect by planting Cordyline and Phormium
in the bed between the pond and the cliff top, with linking plants in
the hot colours border. They did look stunning, especially from the house. It
was possibly my hardest removal decision, but with nagging connotations of
seaside roundabouts, blocking the ha-ha effect, and after I tripped myself up
on the leaves a few times narrowly escaping tumbling into the deep end of the
pond, I decided to evict them while I still could. Dwarf conifers have
replaced them. Desiring a
hot colours border is an ‘age thing’, all my life I had preferred soft cool
colours and subtle muted tones, but as our eyesight begins to deteriorate it
is time for a change! Early August is
a drab time for our backdrop of mostly deciduous woodland and the rockeries
look a little tired as you clamber up through them – then suddenly you are
confronted by a complete riot of outrageous summer colour. No matter which
path you take around the garden it takes you completely by surprise, skirting
the prairie or crossing the lawn it always takes my breath away. You can even
see it from space on Google Earth. To form it we scraped up soil and built a
low stone wall curving behind the pond into a raised bed, beneath our newly
moved rabbit proof south facing stone wall. Prime location! The
prairie is the next player to take centre stage. Just as the rest of the
garden is winding down for the year, Stipa gigantea, Miscanthus sinensis and
my preferred smaller types of Cortaderia (deeply
unfashionable at the time of planting) burst into their full glory, and
fascinate us dancing in the wind, lit by the low winter sun or glazed with
frost. Prairie style planting is sold as an easy option but I actually found
it quite difficult to establish, and rather labour intensive to maintain. The
grasses, sedges, rushes and suitably tall flowers, like many of the plants in
this garden, were mostly grown from seed in pots, and planted out adding
compost to get them started in our shallow stony soil. Self seeding is
definitely encouraged but it all needs very strict selection and a lot of
weeding to maintain a balance. I spend two or three long heavy days in early
March working my way through, cutting down carefully with secateurs to
preserve the new shoots, and scratching out the dead grass from large clumps
with my roughest gloves. Finally, thorough weeding avoiding emerging bulbs
which are key to maintaining interest while the new growth struggles to make
an impact. A rabbit
proof fruit and vegetable garden, with raised beds and a greenhouse, occupies
the top corner of the new garden. It is partly hidden by an English rose
circle, wrapped around by a border containing pinks, blues, whites and
purples. A wide green grass path snakes through between this border and the
prairie to merge into the lawn of the old garden. I always wanted the old and new gardens to
remain completely different in style but I am only now beginning to feel that
they are starting to knit together pleasingly. Removing a huge Juniper ‘Sky
Rocket’ which lined up too well with the Corsican Pine has helped greatly.
Changing the line of paths to follow the rock strata across, and distinctive
crossover plants, have helped. Recently I have taken a chunk out of the lawn
to extend the curving line of the grass path around to my earliest set of
steps. This brings me full circle to my first love, the natural rockery,
wrapped around two sides of the house and stuffed full of precious gems,
especially in spring. There is never a dull moment. We enjoyed
our village open day so much last summer, we have decided to open under the
National Garden Scheme, at varying times each year to take advantage of this
garden’s ‘all year interest’. Glenn Shapiro |