September's Garden Update
“God Almighty first planted a Garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man; without which buildings and palaces are but gross handy-works: and a man shall ever see, that, when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately, sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater perfection.”
Francis Bacon, Of Gardens, 1625
This month, we began cutting the evergreen hedges in the garden now that we can be confident that all the young birds have flown the nest. The hedges are a crucial part of the garden’s winter architecture but it’s a big job, not made easier by the fact that ours are largely made up of the very vigorous Tsuga heterophylla rather than the more languid Taxus baccata. This means that, especially in a wet summer like this one, there are thumb-thickness growths all along the top of the hedge that are too stout to cut with a hedge cutter so require lopping to get a flat top, all of which which takes a very long time. When doing this however, I’m reminded of Francis Bacon’s recommendation for hedges from the essay mentioned above, and am grateful for our own comparatively modest offering:
The Garden is best to be square, encompassed on all the four sides with a stately arched hedge; the arches to be upon pillars of carpenter's work, of some ten foot high, and six foot broad, and the spaces between of the same dimension with the breadth of the arch. Over the arches let there be an entire hedge of some four foot high, framed also upon carpenter's work; and upon the upper hedge, over every arch, a little turret, with a belly enough to receive a cage of birds: and over every space between the arches some other little figure, with broad plates of round coloured glass gilt, for the sun to play upon.
Phew. In the time we saved by growing less fantastical hedges we managed to prune the apple cordons - I love how removing the long growth reveals the neat structure and rosy fruits beneath, and the trees are absolutely laden this year. We’ve also started to take cuttings of tender Pelargonium, Plectranthus, and Salvia in preparation for next year’s pot displays and we’ll soon start on cuttings of hardy plants to fill the borders we’ll empty out and re-plant this winter. We have lots of hardy biennials and perennials coming along in the glasshouse, but it’s not too late to sow these if you have seed lying around. As always, there’s a certain amount of lifting and shifting to do in the new plantings where things are in need of a little rearrangement, and we have a few nice shrubs to drop into gaps. I will also open a bulb catalogue in earnest to make a shopping list for this year, rather than my usual smash-and-grab approach in October.
It’s no secret that I’m not a summer person, and I’ve written here before about my obsession with this time of year, but I’m especially looking forward to autumn. It’s been a tricky and at times demoralising growing season, as anybody who’s tried to grow a courgette this year will attest. Senescence, it seems, is the garden’s last act of generosity; now is the time I start to look forward to cutting it all back to start afresh next year, and often in life do we have the chance to do that?
Kate