My Garden Story

By the third year I had planted a few things of my own, moved the rose bed to beside the drive, and added three abelia and a scarlet Japonica to the hellebore bed. I didn't really like the abelia flowers, so I trimmed them off and shaped the three shrubs into tidy mounds. The Japonica or Japanese quince grew very well, too well as it turned out, and it suckered. It was covered in sharp thorns and difficult to get into to prune e properly. I had no idea what to do. The gardener cut it back, but it continued to double in size and in the end, we had to take it out. Over the years two out of the three abelias died. I replaced one with a scarlet camellia japonica and left a space in the middle. The three big trees were a magnolia denudata, a Japanese weeping cherry and a Japanese maple called Golden Full Moon; around the base of this I planted a circle of bluebells and, then made the mistake of adding a native white violet which promptly bolted under the hellebores and to other parts of the garden. Later, I planted three small rambling red roses at the front. You can't have those, said my then gardener, councils grow them in parks, and they get terrible black spot. He should know, he worked for a council. Nevertheless, I ignored him, and they have done well over the years. They don't get black spot and are easy to cut back once a year. They also repeat flower over a long period of time. That gardener is no longer with me. I tackled the bed with the teucrium hedge. My mother asked me to plant a Garrya elliptica, the silk tassel shrub, and I did. It is a lovely thing, but it struggled for a couple of years and them died. I added another abelia and then I spotted a row of three delicious smallish fluffy pink trees in a parking lot in Bowral.  Intrigued, I worked out the lot belonged to a shoe shop in the main street so in I went. A man approached. Can you tell me the name of that pink tree in your parking lot?  He looked at me. A bloody nuisance, he said. Why? it's beautiful, I said. Problem is he continued, it drops pink dust all over the cars. He didn't know its name, but I found out it was a tamarisk, so I consulted a well-know gardener who lived up the road.  No, she said, it won't survive the frost. But it does so well in Bowral I protested.  That's because of the streetlights, she said, they add just enough warmth for the frost not to settle. That made sense, but I had a memory of seeing one in a garden in Rydal, where I knew it snowed. So, I went ahead and planted one. It is deciduous, but a wonder in the spring. The shoe shop man cut all three of his down - couldn't stand the pink dust, I guess.  One of the elderly crabapples beside the path at the top of the steps leading from the birdbath to the lawn looked marvellous when it flowered at the same time as the tamarisk. On the other side of the path, I planted a lemon verbena and wondered what to do with the rest of the very large spaces. I pruned the roses and watered them well. I spray a couple for black spot and aphids (we'll get to pests and poisons later)  and they returned several summers of glorious blooms, but the frustration I felt about the other side of the house didn't go away. In an effort to curb my complaining, the gardener suggested making another, smaller bed up near the post and rail fence. I looked at the old lawn, firmly entrenched. How would you do that. I asked. Cover it with newspaper to kill the grass, he said, then it comes out easy, chuck some compost about and dig it in, and then plant it up. This was a practical man, and I liked the idea, it provided distraction from the vast expanses of empty garden bed, and also from the book I was writing. I said go for it and started saving the weekend papers.