Newsletter 2006 - Garden
My gardening articles continue to be published in Dog World, and early in the year I thought that it might be a good idea to open the garden to readers of the paper during the local championship show in August, so that they could see the garden that they read about in the articles.
The Yellow Book
Having seen a few programmes on TV about opening gardens, I put aside a few plants to fill in any holes that might be apparent. However, I forgot that, due to its clay basis, my soil becomes very hard and unworkable in the middle of summer. Against my better judgement, I had to do a lot of watering to make the ground soft enough to be able to plant. In order to be as green as possible in this watering, I decided to use grey water from my washing up. I did however make one serious mistake. The amount of water in a washing up bowl is a little more than I usually put in my watering cans. I thought it would be alright, but unfortunately I managed to injure my back and spent the week leading up to the Open Garden in bed, leaving Brian and Carol to do the finishing touches to the garden - which they did brilliantly.
One visitor very kindly suggested that the garden should be “in the Yellow Book”. For those of who do not know what this is, the Yellow Book is the annual publication of the National Gardens Scheme which lists 3,500 gardens in the country which are opened to the public in aid of charity. The majority of the gardens in the book are much larger than mine and include stately homes. Gardens are selected by County Organisers and their team members, based on excellence and interest to the general public. Having seen a couple of television programmes on people getting ready for opening under the scheme, I have to admit to a slight trepidation. I mulled this idea over for a few days, and eventually plucked up enough courage to phone the county organiser to offer my garden for inclusion. The conversation wasn't exactly encouraging as she suggested that it was likely that the impact of my dogs on the garden would probably mean that it wasn't up to the required standard, still she said she would get the local representative to come and take a look.
A couple of days later, we arranged for the local lady to come and visit. It was lucky that it was so soon after the opening as there wasn't much work to be done to get it ready. She was very interested to meet the dogs since they are very much part of the appeal of the garden. We wandered around together and eventually she was ready to make her pronouncement. I have to say that I was expecting a gentle let down, that she felt that the garden was too small to have 45 minutes of interest or that it simply wasn't good enough. The only criterion I was happy that I would fulfill was that it should have some special interest; I knew that the dogs provided that. I was therefore amazed to hear her say that it was accepted.
That was the start of a whole new set of experiences. We were given a number of forms to complete, the hardest part of which is to describe your garden in fifty words or less. To help with this, we were given a copy of the Yellow Book to get ideas. It is remarkably hard to objectively describe your own garden. I have to say I spent hours on this task. It reminded me of writing judging critiques. Setting the opening date was a fun challenge. I had to remember when the garden was looking at its best, at least my articles helped with that. Then I had to check dates against the dog showing calendar. Finally I settled on 16 and 17 June 2007.
So now the focus is on making sure that all those little holes get filled for next June. Having come to the realisation that planting in my heavy clay soil is best avoided in the summer, I decided to indulge myself this autumn and went out and bought a car load of plants – it is scary how they all disappear so easily into the garden. It was weird being perfectly happy to buy plants with blackening leaves, or simply just a slight sign of life, but this is a great time to plant. The soil is still warm enough for them to become established before the winter really sets in. Back in days of yore, before the wide scale containerisation of plants, autumn was the key planting time of year. Autumn is all about just tidying the garden up for winter – it is a time for putting back some of the hope and magic by planting too.
So now all we have to do is sit back and wait for the publication of the Yellow Book and eagerly anticipate people’s reaction to the garden. I do hope that some of you will be able to come and visit, either just turn up during our open weekend (opening times will be in the book) or if you are visiting the area at some other time, contact me to arrange an appointment.
As part of the Yellow Book information, there is a space for a link to the garden's web site - so I thought "why not" and have created a section of this site devoted to the garden. Just click on the button to see more.