Article 4 | My Garden Story

Article 4 - Looking out part 2

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Last time we looked out from the kitchen, bedroom bathroom, office and spare room. Basically the last three were extensions of the same view. There are two more windows, both look into the front courtyard from different angles.

The front courtyard, which is also the entry to the house, sounds complicated but isn’t. It is a square with features in each of the four corners and a fountain in the middle. This too, is square, sandstone, a fountain with a shallow round basin cut in the middle through which the water bubbles, ripples over the edges and splashes gently into the surrounding water. This is run by a small pump activated inside the house, there is no timer. The courtyard is paved with sandstone interspersed with gravel. It makes a pattern of sorts.

Against the house are three steps leading to a short terrace to the front door. All sandstone, and prone to mould. This is covered with a pergola, the first pillar at the top of the steps supports a pink wisteria – that’ll pull the house down said Pete the builder - immediately below is a burgundy leafed weeping maple acer Tamukeyama underplanted with Galanthus. The next pillar is entwined with a clematis Armandii “Apple Blossom”. Nooo, said my English sister, an exceptional and knowledgeable gardener, when she saw it. That’s a mistake, it is deciduous, and the leaves never break down, it always a mess when not in flower. She is right, but it is partly evergreen, and I can cope with a bit of mess. At its foot in a Bergenia, not my favourite thing but it has pink flowers in winter. Somehow a cluster of common snowdrops has forced it’s way through this. I think the leaf litter might help! Then there is a gap to the next pillar up which climbs a Pierre de Ronsard rose planted twenty years ago, which flowers from spring to autumn. In the corner I first planted a cutting someone gave me of a white fuchsia called Annabel, this luckily is extremely vigorous as the layer above and around it is an unnamed pink azalea, again from a cutting from my mother, who got it from a friend at her church who didn’t know its name. The ground cover is Saxifraga stolonifera, and surmounting the lot is the piece de resistance, a luculia gratissima. A gift from heaven, it too flowers in winter over quite a long time, the perfume is a gardenia/vanilla mix, and it is in a large pot but I’m sure the roots have gone through the bottom as it now bolts upwards when in flower and must be severely cut back each year to stop it straggling. I didn't mean this to all be pink but that's how it has turned out, and because it is somewhat shaded it doesn't clash with the terra cotta house.

Corner three against the house has a wide spreading Japanese green leafed weeping maple acer dissectum filigree, which was overhanging the fountain in its third year of growth, and has to be severely pruned to stop it taking over. It is underplanted with mostly native white violets. Both maples were mature and well shaped when I bought them so I follow the shape annually. The final corner, which gets all day sun and is up against a wall, has a bed of English lavender which is replanted every seven years or so. Above this and behind the wall is an old miniature weeping cherry which was here when I arrived so I don’t know its name, underplanted with more escaped violets which tumble down the wall and pink tulips from when we were allowed to dig our own up after the tulip festival in the local part. I have no idea what they are called. All this can be seen from the dining room windows and is partly lit at night. From the sitting room, which faces due east, the view is across the fountain, the two outer corners of the courtyard and towards a hedge of Michelia Scented Pearl, which has no scent I can detect. Beyond that are the trees that border the neighbour’s garden, a magnificent Manchurian pear and a grove of huge eucalypts that shields us from the view of each other’s houses. Directly below these windows and not much in evidence is a large terracotta pot with a sulky white hydrangea macrophylla that has never flowered and suffers from powdery mildew. It has been treated and moved to get more sun, I’ll give it one more year, but it is almost incidental as it can’t be seen from the sitting room which is the tidiest room in the house; it has an open fire, old oak furniture, modern art, books everywhere, a huge Italian chandelier and on the floor, a global village of miniature houses collected on my travels. But this is not about the house. At the far end of the room is a glass door that used to lead out into the birdbath courtyard, but is now blocked by the echium so is simply a light source. There are a couple of area that can’t be seen from inside the house, one is the garage wall facing east, there is nothing remarkable here, lots of pink Japanese windflowers, big purple violets are just left to themselves; there are two mock orange plants that smell heavenly and brush against the laundry line and a struggling Kafia lime. The mock oranges are cut to the ground every year, then suddenly shoot up and take me by surprise. Next time, other things in the garden that have taken me by surprise.