When we first saw the garden, in May 2010, it was full of huge and dilapidated thickets of Leylandii and Juniper; we didn’t like those much, but we did love the sight of sun and cloud over the field and woods we could see from the garden, the glorious expanse of sky, the bats and the swifts changing shifts overhead on summer evenings. So we built a house, and settled down to see what else we could make happen that we loved.
The soil is alkaline clay over chalk; a soil we quickly learned to work with, not against. Inspiration for gardening on alkaline soil came from beautiful West Dean, where we spent many happy and instructive hours wandering through the the kitchen and walled gardens, and pinching ideas, such as the gooseberry cordons on the kitchen garden wall (woodpigeons can’t land on them!).
Another inspiration is Glennie Kindred’s superb book ‘Letting in the Wild Edges’ (Permanent Publications), about celebrating the natural world in the garden, making space for wild things, and being mindful of the changing seasons.
So it’s not the tidiest garden. The grass is never mown so short that there isn’t headroom for daisies and grasshoppers; and round the margins there are still some nettles (for the sake of the butterflies) and brambles (for the sake of the crumbles!).
We try to garden in as eco friendly way as possible, composting garden waste for mulch, chipping our prunings to make the kitchen garden paths, and collecting rain in water butts, and a rain harvest tank underground near the wildlife pond, into which it overflows as necessary. This pond has no filter or artificial aerators, it is a self-balanced ecosystem, with newts, toads, dragonflies, damsel flies, water beetles, aquatic snails and spiders, and a visiting grass snake.
We are very proud of our little orchard, which yields an abundance of apples and plums, although many of the trees are still babies. There are a few old trees too, which we managed to rescue from the choking Lelandii, and we have planted heritage apples and plums, such as Ribstone Pippin, Coe’s Golden Drop, Mirabelle, Scotch Bridget – and delicious William Crump! The orchard is also home to our lovely bees, who do sterling work pollinating all the fruit blossom.
There is always something new happening in the garden, from finding the first snowdrops, to planning out our Physic Garden. This takes inspiration from nearby Chawton, where I first imagined the kind of herb garden a Jane Austen heroine may have used; chicory and lovage for skin clearing tonics, and southernwood and lavender for scenting the linens, with a rosemary hedge, and a shady arbour for resting and smelling the herbs.
We hope you will drop in and enjoy our lovely garden with us – we look forward to seeing you!
