The first big project of the Spring was creating raised beds in the orchard and moving the raspberries from an area where they never really got going to this new much brighter situation.

I’m very pleased that the wood was all recycled from an old shelter and builders waste and the poles I already had . Just the addition of cardboard and some new compost and here we have it . Thanks to Nicola for her hard work this morning. I’m really pleased.

An old Celtic celebration heralding the first stirrings of Spring. Just 6 weeks into the Spring Equinox, it’s time to prepare for the next growing season.

Every year I welcome the sea of snowdrops in our woods and the spread of little colonies up the garden – some are intentional, others are ‘volunteers’ ( I love that term for self-sown).

This week I cleaned the greenhouse and what a difference! I also ordered a bulk bag of compost/soil mix for new no dig beds in the orchard.

Despite the frost and chill I more ready for Spring than I’ve ever been.

I was a city girl until we moved here in 2014. I never even imagined leaving London until 1990, and part of my heart will always belong to that amazing place. However I have embraced life here at the Old Railway Tavern and the beautiful garden I now love.

I was always brought up to appreciate nature by my nature loving parents, especially Mum, and my early childhood happy place was in my maternal grandparents large garden in Sussex.

So here I sit in the wild end of our plot, listening to the birds on this frosty January morning dedicating myself to immersing myself in nature here.

I no longer feel like a transplant; I have put down roots and I plan to grow strongly in this place where I have been planted.

It has been far too long since I engaged properly with this blog and also with the garden. Following the loss of Mum and Dad in September 2022 I retreated from a lot of things and my energy was taken up with grieving. There was not much left for anything else.

I did however plant a cut flowers patch last Summer which I enjoyed. I am also very grateful to my gardener Nicola who has kept the ball rolling and put in the hours tidying up when I couldn’t.

The thing about gardens though is that they continue to flourish and develop even when you aren’t engaged. That’s what makes them both a delight and also potentially a problem. If you feel that garden jobs must be done, because if not you have missed the window of opportunity , this can cause great anxiety. I had to learn to just let things not get done – there is always next year!

I remind myself of the Buddhist saying “Nature doesn’t hurry but everything gets done”. Nature certainly got things done and the garden looks great ( thanks again to Nicola’s sustained efforts). Watching the cycle of the seasons and the constant change reminds me that I can’t control nature, even if I wanted to, and some things will just happen despite my involvement.

For example, my last post here was about digging the ponds , and here they are now ;

Brimming with life and such a joy.

So I’m aiming to re engage and get the most enjoyment I can from this amazing space. Nature is a healer and I’ll use that to the fullest.

After literally years talking about this, I finally have the beginnings of two large ponds in my garden. I wanted something big, to honour the size of the place, and because apparently no-one ever says “I wish my pond was a bit smaller”. I had originally thought of one huge pond crossed by an ornamental bridge. However, once I costed it all up it seemed pretty expensive, so I went for the next best thing; two ponds butting up against the original path, which will act as a sort of causeway and give great views of pond life as well as being a pretty special design feature.

Anyway, today Steve and Carl came with their diggers and made two enormous holes, accompanied by two equally huge piles of soil. I now need to measure up for two pond liners and also make final decisions about what to do with the banks of rather nice looking topsoil.

As this is such a large project I anticipate it will take months until completion. Not least because, with our water metered, I would like to fill it as far as possible with rainwater, which is of course also the best way to ensure that the water is of good quality to support wildlife. If we have a winter like last year, this shouldn’t be a problem, but I suspect that now that I am keen on rain we will have some dry months. Let’s take that as the ultimate flood prevention scheme, actually wishing for winter rain! I will divert water from the downpipes of the house and use the water in my many water butts around the vegetable garden, let’s see how that goes.

In the last few weeks I feel that I (and Nicola too!) have done more un-gardening than gardening! We have been clearing out the jungly and weedy growth to make way for new ideas and planting, as well as the large pond that is have planned. In some ways it is very satisfying, cutting back the scrub and weeds and letting more light into previously dark and over-grown areas. However it does feel a bit relentless at times and even destructive. I feel sad for the shrubs that were planted deliberately, but which got out of hand and have become woody and misshapen. I am not so sad for the relentless brambles and dogwood that are the bane of my life. It’s good to make such spectacular changes however and I know it will be wonderful when finished.

Here are the before and after pictures

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All of the leafy growth was taken down to the woods and turned into another ‘fedge’ between out plot and the neighbours’ to supplement the old hedgerow line. Good for wildlife and possibly a deterrent to deer.

The next phase is to get Steve in with his digger to dig the two large ponds each side of the path. I had thought of one large pond with a bridge, but the larger the pond the more expensive the liner and two ponds and a causeway instead of a bridge is more cost effective. After all I will need plenty of funds for the new planting.

Usually at about this time of year my enthusiasm for gardening wanes. After a busy Summer of sowing, weeding, harvesting and generally hacking back the undergrowth, I feel the need for a rest, and the cooler and wetter weather further dampens my enthusiasm for being outside. I tend to retreat inside and tell myself that I’ll get back to gardening in the Spring when things start happening again. The trouble of course with this plan is that I start the Spring season with so much left undone that I feel that I am constantly rushing to keep up. Somehow gardening starts to feel like a race and I envy those prepared gardeners who have everything in place in March and simply do what needs doing at a reasonable pace.

However, I am glad and excited to say that this year feels different. For a variety of reasons, this Autumn feels like the beginning of a gardening adventure, with the possibility of starting new projects that will come to fruition in the Spring and Summer of next year.

While many people spent the lockdown tending to their gardens and finding more time to be outside, I had the opposite experience, as I struggled to keep up with work and family commitments. Life at home was rarely peaceful, and while it was wonderful to have our outdoor space, I had little time and energy to tackle all the jobs and maintenance that this garden requires, let alone staring new projects and creating new spaces. Perhaps it was also the general stress that we were all living under, but I often had a growing sense of panic that the garden was somehow ‘getting away from me’ and while I rationalised about having a ‘wild’ garden, the thistles and nettles really irritated me- often literally!

This Spring we also had extensive flooding and I thought I would never love my garden again in the same way as I waded through nearly a foot of water just to get to my shed and greenhouse. Happily however, I only lost a few specimen plants and most of the garden has recovered well.

So now, as we approach Samhain and the end of the year I am feeling unusually optimistic and full of energy and ideas. I also feel incredibly lucky to now have regular help in the garden from Nicola Harris (Instagram: gorgeousgardens_by_nic) who not only willingly attacks the maintenance tasks that I need help with, but is equally full of enthusiasm for this garden and the ideas that I share. It is so good to have another keen gardener who appears to be happy (or at least smiles!) as I ramble on about my latest gardening schemes!

So what am I planning?

First of all a large pond to be seen from the house, offering a whole new viewpoint and home for wildlife. I also plan to plant a few more trees, especially a walnut tree and some more fruit trees. I am considering an ‘ephemeral pond’ at the end of the garden with reeds to mimic a fenland landscape (and to act as a mitigating drain if/when things get very wet again in the Winter) and I’m updating the pergola area near to the pond, as a new sheltered sitting area.

I am also hoping to keep up this blog more regularly, to chart my progress and as a journal to contain my ideas.

So to all you fellow gardeners and interested friends Happy New Year!!! Look out for the upcoming changes. I’m already clearing the land for the new pond and I have to say the garden already seems more spacious and light in the middle section.

It was far too cold yesterday, and the garden was still under water for the most part, so I cheered myself up by reviewing my latest seed order and the seeds I have from last year. Apparently it is nearly Spring and I can get sowing soon.

I plan to do some vegetables, the ones that give most ‘value’ each summer: tomatoes, courgettes and beans, along side some leafy kale and salad leaves. I’m not altogether certain that carrots, beetroot and other veg are worth it, given the struggle I have to defend them against rodents around here.

My greatest excitement this year, however, is my plan to grow an even larger stock of cut flowers. I love to have fresh flowers in the house and picking and arranging them is a real pleasure – although I need to learn some flower arranging skills. I also need to train my sweet peas better so that they don’t all grow in a tangle and end up too twisted for the vase. In short , I need to give my flowers more attention this year, and with working from home, still looking very likely, perhaps I will have a small amount of time each day to tend my patch.

After two very wet months, water table rose so high in the garden that we now have extensive groundwater flooding. We are used to the middle garden getting ‘soggy’ in the Winter, but this is something else. All around us fields are also flooded and our neighbours also have lakes instead of gardens. In a flat low-land landscape like this there is simply nowhere for the water to go.

Our beautiful cabin flooded and much of the garden is impassable, especially now that the floodwater has an inch thick layer of ice over it. I slosh and slide around, attempting to access the shed and greenhouse (which are also flooded) and hoping that I won’t topple and fill my wellies with icy water.

To say that this is disheartening is an under-statement and I think I have been grieving this week, overcome by moments of tearfulness and hopelessness. However, nature has a way of recovering and I have to remember that by the Summer we will be dry and baking, and this flood will be a memory. This is one reason for blogging this now, so that I can look back and remember that all things change, especially gardens.

We also need to think about how to manage this situation in the future, as these sorts of events will be more common as, due to climate change, Winters become wetter.

The clear solution is to create ponds and ditches to contain the water and to provide lower points for the water to flow to. We can even pump water from where we don’t want it ( around the cabin) to where we do ( a wildlife pond towards the lower end of the garden). Of course groundwater flooding is far more difficult to manage than flash flooding, as the high water table is not something that we can necessarily control, however some large scale landscaping to create gradients and collection points may work, especially when the situation is not so severe.

So I am planning a formal pond nearer to the house, which will be lined, but will also collect water, some ditches to the middle of the garden and a large wildlife pond towards the end of the garden. We can introduce local sedges to the ditches as well as willows, to make a connection with the local landscape. Potentially we can add much of interest to what is actually a very flat, and at times, monotonous profile. As my dad says “necessity is the mother of invention” and we could approach this difficult situation as a spur to greater invention and development of our garden, creating more interesting wildlife habitats and visual contrasts.

I also understand that evergreens are good for wet winter soils as they draw up water all year around. So I am planning more planting in the way of evergreen hedges to break up the space and also provide interest. So, there is much to do. However not much can be achieved right now with so much water and ice. I think it is time to draw up plans and develop creative ideas. If you have any thoughts , please do share them in the comments. All ideas gratefully received. I am more used to thinking in terms of dry gardens on this side of the country and very unused to too much water.