The wild garden

All the plants have been planted. The violas cheerily nod to one another in the front garden. The daffodils hopefully will brighten up a couple of corners of the back garden come the spring. They’re all in places visible from the house windows so we will be able to be cheered by the flowers, even if the weather, or our health, is such we can’t manage to get outside.

Carol, our gardener, has been hard at work clearing our wild area. It is just too wild, full of unwanted plants such a rape & dock, the sort of wild thing that will take over the whole garden given half a chance. Throughout the summer she had spent an inordinate amount of time on it.

The wild garden circle when it was first laid out

First was the challenge of dead-heading the narcissi. They’re not the will variety which would just naturalise themselves. These are a variety that need dead-heading so they will turn their energy into storing up what they need to bloom another year. What made the task so hard is the fact that the wild area is in a circle surrounded by paths, home to about a dozen silver birch trees. You cannot reach the narcissi in the middle without stepping on the other upcoming plants. The circle is too wide & there are no stepping stones across or through it.

Full of narcissi in the spring

The next shock was when all the rape appeared. The tall yellow flowers obscured the more attractive plants in the garden beyond. All that rape needed dead-heading otherwise the seeds would scatter throughout the garden. That took another few hours.

Then we discovered the grass & dock was starting to expand out of the circle, taking over the path. Soon that would disappear under greenness.

We’re intending to leave the narcissi in, but turf over the area immediately. Ultimately we’re thinking of opening areas for the wild plants we want, some cornflowers, scabia, ox-eyed daisies, poppies, for example.

But first the area needs to be cleared. Carol is carefully trying to slice across the top of the soil to take out the mat of roots. After spending it must be 10 hours of back-breaking work on it she must have done about half the circle now. Yesterday alone she filled one and a half big green bins of grass, root, dock etc. What really annoys her is that the narcissi have been planted so shallowly that she keeps finding she’s sliced into the bulbs even though she’s not taking an inch off the top of the soil.

Still all this hard work will be worth it. Next year that circle should be something more manageable. There is plenty of undercover for smaller wildlife, the frogs & hedgehogs. The odd nettle is being left in the inconspicuous corners for the butterflies. Nectar producing plants are everywhere for the bees etc. Berries abound. So our garden should still be wildlife friendly without becoming overrun & an incipient jungle once more.

I’ll be glad when it is done & she can concentrate on the rest of the garden.